The first project for Design Nature, the freshman introductory design course, is an individual project to construct a device that will leap into the air. A kit of parts was provided, and most of the body of the device had to be created out of laser cut ABS plastic.
There were additional restrictions, as the hoppers could not store more than three joules of energy and needed a delay before launch. I decided that one of my goals for my hopper was to make it spin in the air. I accomplished this by using a section of the hopper as a counter-weight and lever during launch.
Ultimately, there were a few things that could have been improved in my hopper. It only stored one-tenth the maximum allowable energy due to problems with my release mechanism. Also, more efficient and simpler designs were possible. The primary goal of the project was to introduce us to the design process, which was helpful in the next project, building wall walkers with teams.
Below is a video I created midway through the project describing how I would improve my design for the next iteration.
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