Torsion Catapult

Today the rope ended up snapping and breaking on us as of right now the catapult is out of commission until we retrieve more rope. we added more wood support beams 4 X 4 across bottom of the cross bar and two 2 X 6 X 18 on the outside of catapult so that the wood did not snap on us again. i added eye hooks on back 2 X 6 board as our release mechanism. we also added three more 2 X 4 on top of post so the arm stopped earlier and launched the object in to the air. 

On Friday of last week Joe came in after another AP test when he should have been in 3rd period. However 3rd period is a disappointing waste of a class so Joe had no problem with coming to engineering  instead. Joe was able to make a sling and he prepared the catapult for testing. The catapult performed very well. Even without maximum cranking of the handles the ball flew very far. Even though the project is considered late at this point we consider this a success due to this being the first functioning torsion catapult at South.

  J oe has AP testing today so Jayce must work alone. Thankfully Jayce is an experienced craftsman so he was able to almost finish the catapult. 

Jayce bought the wood as well as eye hooks over the weekend. Today Jayce worked on replacing the broken wood while Joe wrote the instructable so that it is at the same step in the project as the actual catapult is. Jayce also used extra wood to double up the point at which the rope exits the base .

On Friday of last week Joe came in after another AP test when he should have been in 3rd period. However 3rd period is a disappointing waste of a class so Joe had no problem with coming to engineering  instead. Joe was able to make a sling and he prepared the catapult for testing. The catapult performed very well. Even without maximum cranking of the handles the ball flew very far. Even though the project is considered late at this point we consider this a success due to this being the first functioning torsion catapult at South.

Joe has AP testing today so Jayce must work alone. Thankfully Jayce is an experienced craftsman so he was able to almost finish the catapult.

Jayce bought the wood as well as eye hooks over the weekend. Today Jayce worked on replacing the broken wood while Joe wrote the instructable so that it is at the same step in the project as the actual catapult is. Jayce also used extra wood to double up the point at which the rope exits the base. (double wood)

Jayce has a plan for how we will make a release mechanism and Joe has a good idea of how to make the sling. Jayce will buy the wood over the weekend.

Since we can't work on the catapult much due to the crack we are further looking into the issue of how to make a functioning onager sling as well as planning how we implement a  release mechanism.

Jayce found the breaking point of the catapult's base. He twisted about 5 1/2 times and the wood cracked. Now we must buy new wood. The wood cracked at the point where the rope bundle exits the hole in the wood and wraps around the handle.

The wood was cut and installed in the catapult's base. Now we will go back to testing the extent to which we can crank the handles before the wood in between the crossbars cracks.

We have selected which 4x4's we want to use as crossbars and have marked the wood for cutting. Now we are cutting the wood using the miter saw.