Design Journal - Day 3

November 19, 2018 

Day 3 Journal 

By: Angel G 

I, Angel talked to Will who is in my physics class and in the wood shop class to help me build the metal dowel launcher version. The prototype for the launcher with the metal dowel was finally built today. It took about 3 days to build it since the building could only take place after school or during lunch. Since we chose to use the metal dowel and the hex nut, there was less wood cutting needed, since the metal version launcher version only needs two wood blocks. In the wood launcher, three wood blocks were used.  

Scrap wood from Mr. Saponara’s class was used since it was only a prototype. The length and width of the prototype were made according to the size of the metal dowel. The height did not really matter since the metal dowel is close to the base. As mentioned in day 2, the metal dowel was a 3/8 carriage bolt and was bought from Canadian tire. A picture of the metal dowel can be seen down below.

As previously mentioned in day 2, a 3/8 zinc hex nut was used to restrain the spring at the top as seen in the picture down below. The hex nut allows the spring to be compressed without needing hot glue like the wooden block in day 1. A picture of the hex nut can be seen down below. 

To built the structure of the launcher, two long sides are needed beside the  launcher and a base is needed underneath the launcher as that's where the balls will go, and a small backside is needed to put the metal dowel with the spring, hex nut, and wood blocks inside. The wood pieces were hot glue together since this was only a prototype and were made to see if this solved the problem about the spring moving before. The wood came from the scrap wood we picked out before from the wood shop. The video of the mechanics of the metal version launcher can be seen below. 

This is a milestone because we now know how to build the launcher, which the main component of this toy.