You are, I think, far too young to remember the TV programe the Great Egg Race, with Heinz Wolff et al presenting - it was in the 70's/80's when TV had 4 channels and other than that you went to the movies, so it was quite popular. They did a variety of challenges, many involving eggs, I particularly remember the egg used as the weight on the end of a string that swung around a pole to create a primitive escapement in the 'create a clock' challenge. They would have been proud of you, though TIG welding would have seen as a bit too space age I think.

I love your videos so very much. Your sense of humor and your brilliant engineering are unmatched.

Stanton had a great series about optimizing a trebuchet. Also appreciated his attempt at a flywheel to capture the falling weight's energy.

Andy, have you considered making the weighted arm shorter? Perhaps 50% of its current length? it's the same amount of PE, but the centre of mass is approximately in the centre of the body and should therefore reduce tipping. The reduction in torque can already be overcome with your cam/leverage arrangement. Overall, I like your 'folded' design. It's an elegant solution to a tricky problem! Also you should enter the competition anyway. I think you're underestimating yourself here. Good luck!

This is clearly an exercise in thinking out of the box, many trials and errors. Half the fun of this is the journey, not the destination. I'll be waiting to see what you come up with, and how you work the problem into a working solution.

Very cool challenge and a wonderful attempt! :)

I'm excited for part 2. I like the idea of using pulleys to flip the weight around, but I wonder what the results would be like if you tested the weights and arm lengths using the traditional design, even though they would violate the rules.

Can't wait to see the next spring-loaded mechanism! For anyone who wants to see the other quirky egg-throwing machines in action, the Fieldhouse Egg-a-pult event is to be live-streamed on KZfaq on Saturday 1st July at 10:00.

Great video. You must be the most inventive and creative engineer on KZfaq. How long did it take to produce all these prototypes?

I have seen all sorts of challenges like this and almost all of them are not interesting, because we (engineers) already know the answer, this is not that simple. You did an awesome job of actually defining the scope of the problem, so we have an obvious best case. I would be interested to see what an actual trebuchet, built within the specified limitations, to established engineering standards could achieve, as a baseline to compare to. You didn't say this in your video, but it is worth saying, a trebuchet is a gravity amplifier. It takes a slow acting but powerful force, gravity, and amplifies it to throw an object faster than gravity alone can affect the object. As a result the object can defy gravity for a short time, and thus be thrown a distance. Also, there is always the equal but opposite force to worry about. A classic trebuchet design is massive. As a result you get a significant dampening of resultant forces. You saw that, when you added a bunch of weight that dampened out reactive forces, it worked better. Given the rules, I suspect (finger in the air, rough guess) that conversion into pneumatic force is the way to go. A big cylinder compressed by a weight going to a small bore with a mechanism to release all the pressure at once.

Andy, catapult the chicken, they will flap the wings and gain a few meters and lay an egg in the excitement

This potato weighs the same as an egg.

Here I was going to suggest an osmium counterweight to maximize the moment arm, but that jazz runs about €1200 per _gram_ so you might have to settle for something cheaper like gold. That or tungsten, it's about €130 per kilo and available in pellets.

Great idea Andy! I'm sure, you will do it👍👍 greeting from Italy😘

thanks for the link..!

Incredible

That’s great 👍

Ohh this is exciting

what an egg-citing development

Start over put the trebusha corner to corner to make more room for a longer arm

It's not really a trebuchet it's more of a catapult. On a trebuchet the weight swings through rather than dropping to the ground which stops the violent jump back/up of the chassis. That said I still enjoyed the video and am looking forward to part 2

Great video, looking forward to Part 2. My two thoughts watching this: 1) to improve the trebuchet design could consider adding some very light materials to the front, to fluff out and create air resistance to anchor the front down and reduce that rebound effect. Mass isn’t the only thing that can resist momentum, drag can too ;-) 2) could possibly make and air gun design. Egg loaded in a barrel, falling weight onto a bladder creates a blast of air propelling the egg. I have my doubts it would be a net performance increase but it’s a curious idea at least. As I was typing I came up with a third: since the apparatus is allowed to move when released, might be a cheeky way to get around it by letting it roll really far forwards. Why throw an egg when you can make an egg-mobile instead? Haha. Maybe the rules don’t allow that amount of cheese though lol

Optimum angle is NOT 45 degrees. That depends on the aerodynamic properties of the egg and elevation aka air density. More precisely a schnitzel less.

3 attempts allowed... Make something that stores the energy from the first two attempts, only to release at the 3rd :D

👍‍‍⭐👍‍‍