Conclusion

 

Our launcher did not particularly meet the expectations of the criteria as only 1 of 4 balls was landed on the target. However, each trial was remarkably consistent on where the ball landed in respect to how far we pulled back the springs. However, for a pretty nice consolation our launcher launched the ball the furthest, very precisely as well (only a few inches off from the measuring tape), with a distance of 31’4”. If were given a little extra time or had to modify our launcher more to introduce a higher level of consistency and precision we would re-hinge the PVC to the baseboard as where most of our misfires in practice and on the test day were a direct result from the pipe shaking chaotically due to the weakness of the pipe’s mount to the board, leading to in accuracy when aiming for the targets. Also to fix this problem we could have hung a weight from the coupler make it more difficult for the spring to lose it’s concentration of energy as it passes through the ball as the ball is pushed out from the pipe. Overall, I feel like we wouldn’t alter much else because despite the results saying we did not accomplish our accuracy goals, each launch was extremely close to hitting the target, even one that hit the target with bulls-eye accuracy. Each group had different target distances, which coincided with the power of each launcher respectively. The most successful group in terms of accuracy was the vex baseball pitcher launcher as they were able to rely on autonomous power as where our launcher was closer to man powered, leading to more human error. However, I feel if we were able to practice more that our consistency would have grown immensely thus improving our aiming capabilities leading to more targets hit. Overall our launcher did not fulfill the problem statement as it asked us to create a precise launcher and we only successfully hit 1 of 4 targets. We learned during this project that applying the skills we learned through building with Vex equipment during previous projects carried over immensely in everyday uses of building. We came to this conclusion because although there sometimes appears to be something out of stock in the cabinet for Vex, either being used by another group or lost or what not, a replacement technique/part could replace that original one to continue the building process. We used this acquired thought process during this project despite the absent of Vex equipment as when we were missing a long enough board we adapted our method of making our launcher adjustable for various angles. Despite previous projects having a lot of issues regarding communication and cooperative responsibility, I feel like this project we all stepped up and each put in effort to different areas pushing towards to achieve our final goal. The delegation happened very naturally and as a result we ended up with our most successful mechanism to date. The overall purpose of this design problem was to challenge the creative side of our brains (lots of options to successfully complete the task) and combine it with all of the skills we have accumulated during the year in terms of technical building, communication, documentation, teamwork, and out-side-of-the-box thinking, to create a final product that was successful.