New direct drop lacrosse ball trebuchet 230+ mph velocities

[Nick481]

Hey all,
I miss when we all used to post about our new builds and brag about distance and everything on the old hurl, hopefully this thread will bring activity to the catapult board. This new trebuchet I built is a little over 6 feet at the axle and utilizes a direct drop counterweight that pulls on a pull line that runs over three sprockets. I designed it in working model 2d to optimize the dimensions and tuning and then modeled it in Autodesk Inventor. Today I got it consistently firing with no issues finally. It is in the 230-240 mph range with only 170 pounds of counterweight, and it still has 50 pounds to go. At less than 200 mph it was over 1000 feet and although I couldn't measure this shot it was most likely at least 1300 feet or more. Make sure to watch it in 1080p because if you look really closely you can see the really aggressive magnus flight of the lacrosse ball. The second link is a little bit of a slow motion video with a 10 ounce mini pumpkin and 170 pounds cw.
Nikkolas
http://youtu.be/xU4FB_ZFD50
http://youtu.be/Y9T0p1oFq7c

[KerikM]

Neat! How about some close-ups??

[Nick481]

Neat! How about some close-ups??

For some reason I don't have any good pics but I will get some next time it is out of the garage.

[madmattd]

Looking REALLY nice there Nick!

[Nick481]

Thanks Matt!