We built a trebuchet for the Wright State University competition. We ended up not attending due to no school the day of the competition. Here is the process and solution for making the trebuchet. When we first started this project our
preconceived perception of trebuchets were very simple, a base, an arm, weight,
and a projectile. Although after we started digging into the project we learned
very quickly that trebuchets take a lot of time to make, and are also very
precise machines. Our first challenge was building the base. We needed to know
how long to make it so that the ball wouldn’t hit it on its launch course.
Also, we needed to construct the base in way that it would be stable when
firing (so energy would not be lost). After that, we moved onto the arm. This
was probably the most difficult part of the project. We relied on Atreb heavily for this portion. We had no idea
what length the long and short arm should have been. Once we overcame that
challenge we moved on to the drilling. This was challenging, because we had to
drill the holes perfectly in line with one another or else the axle would be
bent. We overcame this by using a pilot rod after we drilled our first hole.
There are also some areas in our trebuchet that have room for improvement. One
main one was the sling length. This is because of the way we constructed our base.
We made our sling based on the constrictions of our base. If we would have had
an open base, we would have been able to maximize the length. The other part of
our trebuchet that needed improvement was our base. We weren’t able to make it
stable (meaning it had a wobble to it). We managed this problem by adding duct
tape to it. These are the trials and tribulations that we faced while we
constructed our trebuchet.