small project for my son's beaver scout troupe...

[Andrew J. Coholic]

I wanted to do a group project for the two dozen members of my son`s troupe. They dont have a lot of $$, so donated projects like this are welcome, and also young boys like to shoot at things!

Decided small catapults would be fun. Received good feedback for the idea - we will just get the kids to sand them up, put them together and fire plasticine balls at cans or something.. The design is just tab and slot together with the rubber band holding the main parts together as well as firing the catapult arm.

Ran my Shopbot for 4 hours today (while I was doing other work) to cut up a full 4x8 sheet of 6mm Baltic birch, and another part sheet. I dont push the one eighth bit too fast, just 120 IPM.

The large regen blower I have (10 Hp Elmo) raised my shop temp 4 or 5 degrees! Nice benefit now that I have the furnace running anyhow.

prototype..

[Mike Heidrick]

Great Job!

[Bruce Page]

Excellent! The kids will love playing with them!

[Andrew J. Coholic]

So tonight went well. There were 18 of the 20 kids there. I showed one of the leaders how to put one together and they led the kids, although myself and a few other parents assisted. We all got things together and had time to shoot some plasticine balls around the gymnasium.

I forget after a lifetime of making things (grew up with my dad, a millwright and custom woodworker) that I cant assume 5 and 6 year old boys - many who dont get much if any hands on mechanical things - know how to screw nuts onto threaded rod, sand edges, etc. But thats why we do this stuff.. lol. At 46, and with a 2 and 5 year old (both boys), I find myself reliving things now that I got to do hanging around my father's woodworking shop.

Anyhow, its nice to have a CNC router, as cutting parts like this (I made 24 kits of 9 parts each) would not be feasible if I couldnt start the program, walk away and do work while they were being cut. Even just cutting the tabs and cleaning things up, to get ready for the meeting, took me an hour and a half.

Now to think of what the next project could be...





Me and the kids:

[Frederick Skelly]

Great stuff! Maybe your next project could be a CNC rubber band pistol? Or a CNC slingshot? Or a small tab and slot dinosaur, airplane, etc. My mom uses something called z-cardz (spelled just that way) in her Sunday school class as a reward. Seems like you could look at what they sell and scale it up a bit. You should google them.

Good luck!

[Keith Hankins]

cool! Loved working with the scouts when my boys were young.

[Jerome Stanek]

is that allowed in school

[Brad Shipton]

That was really nice and they turned out great. I want to make some toys this year with my machine for local kids that would not get any otherwise.

[Ed Harrall]

As a Industrial Tech teacher we built catapults. But I was mean we shot standard size marshmallows at a target on the floor. The marshmallow only counted if it stayed on the target or if it rolled on to the target and stayed. had to use the marshmallow as they came out of the bag. The reason for that was the scenario was they were in mid-evil times and they would not be able pick the rocks they were using