The idea is that the lever in the back (which there are two of) works in a way sort of like a ratchet. You pull it down to pull the throwing arm back, then move it back up without moving the arm. Several pulls would bring it to the ideal point for launching. The idea is that two men are pulling on the lever to pull it back at great speed.
I'm aware that it wouldn't work in its current iteration, but I ponder...how could it?
To do it, you'd need some kind of release lever and a counterweight system. My theory would be this...
What I want to know is a few things...
1) How would you make the ratchet-lever work? Is it even feasible to do it with two levers?
2) What sort of release trigger would be needed and how could it work?
3) Could it be done without a counterweight system?
I'm trying to figure this out because it really seems fun. I'm not particularly good with machines, thusly I turn to you all.
As for the dual levers, I imagine they'd work similar to bicycle pedals, but don't take my word for that. No clue on the release trigger, that's what always confused my about catapults and the like. Anklebiter fucked around with this message on 01-05-2006 at 01:03 AM.
As for your questions...
1) Imagine a wheel with spokes coming out of it and some type of shunt that comes into contact with it at the 10:30 position. As the wheel is turned clockwise the spokes life the shunt and as they pass it falls back into position. This is a simple ratchet. The two levers would simply both be on the same axle and driven by the same energy source.
2) The trigger can be as simple as knocking the shunt out of position. The wheel would no longer be held in place and the force stored would be released.
3) This goes back to Ankles post. For a simple demonstration take two lengths of twine, or one doubled back on itself, and place a pen in between them. While keeping the length taunt, rotate the pen several times. Letting go of the pen will cause it to spin. The more you rotate, and the tigher you keep the string, the faster it will spin. When you use many very large lengths of rope to do this you can store a fairly impressive ammount of power.
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It's not something people hear about.
This is a rough top-down sketch. Are you saying that the arm needs to be attached to a base arm as in Fig. A or can it be done just with the torsion ropes in Fig. B?
Further, how do you keep the ropes from spinning out of control once you've got them twisted up? I don't think you can keep twisting them over and over.
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nem-x had this to say about Tron:
You terrorist!
yeah he's going to hurl giant bars of soap into Paris.
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
quote:
So quoth Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael:
yeah he's going to hurl giant bars of soap into Paris.
which then will retaliate by carpet bombing the US with diet pills.
Durrr.
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Peanut butter ass Shaq Tarquinn booooze lime pole over bench lick:
which then will retaliate by carpet bombing the US with diet pills.Durrr.
Australia is the fattest country in the world.
(Attempted to build a trebuchet in High School. [My research and planning went smooth as silk, Im just a shitty woodworker =p])
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Gork had this to say about Pirotess:
Try typing "Onager" into a google image search =)(Attempted to build a trebuchet in High School. [My research and planning went smooth as silk, Im just a shitty woodworker =p])
I think I remember when you tried doing that... was a grand idea, just... well... the implementation... yeah.
