Nice! Goodness me, I love this machine.
Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and I'm back with the trebuchet again.
So originally I made this thing to do a certain job for a computer game
and it did that and that was great, but I now want the weight of the counterweight to go up, I
want it to throw nice big bowling balls like this one and it wasn't designed for that, so you could
tell that because it was just killing itself. The amount of energy that was being transferred
out of that bucket just shaking around and going crazy, I had to change it. So a couple of films
ago I extended the arm on that. Brilliant. So that's now nice, but now it's throwing even less
than it was before which is just crazy because it should be throwing more than it was before,
but at least it's safe now, it's not going to break. So today's job really is just to have
a quick look at changing the release angle and the counterweight and the sling length.
And so very quickly, the counterweight obviously that's the amount of energy that you put into
the system then you have the pin on the end of the arm that's how long it holds the sling for,
obviously connected to everything else and then the length of the sling, that's how
fast the thing is going to whip around. Those three are all interrelated, I've put the weight up
a little bit it's now running about 550 kilos and I'm just going to look at the sling and the pin.
Now the sling I've just shortened to 3.9 meters, it was 4.5 before, so we're going to go for our
first shot see what happens and then I'm going to look at the footage and decide, so here we go.
Boom! I like that a lot,
that was lovely and you can hear it whistle, I hope you could hear it whistle, I could,
anyway I'm going to go pace it out, I'm going to look at the footage and I'll come back to you,
see you in a minute. I've just pasted out at 130 meters but the good news is I also looked
at the release angle on the screen and I think it's about 55 degrees, so I've got to get this
pin to hold onto the sling for a bit longer and that way the ball is going to go a bit further, so
I'm just going to bend the pin now just not a lot just a little bit bend the pin and then we should
see it go a little bit further and what we'll do is we'll plot those trajectories,
I haven't moved that camera, so we'll see exactly what difference this makes.
Anyway here we go. I forgot to put the tracer in last time so here we go. Loose.
Oh i love it.
oh
Nice!
All right let's pace it out, let's have a look, see what we got
now here's the thing, it shot less, it shouldn't shoot less, it should shoot more. ah
But statistically this is it's a difficult thing because really I need to do like 10, 20 shots
on each setting and take the average and then know and I'm doing one shot
and that is absolutely no way to do, well science, engineering, statistics, anything like that. It's
rubbish but it just takes too long, I haven't got the time to really thoroughly properly do it
so I can't do that and it is infuriating because I'm sounding like a broken record.
Every time I think it's better and it's not. Daniel, Texas Trebuchet Group; please let me know
where I'm going wrong. really by the way Setting up for a third shot, go again. See in a minute.
It's a third shot, bent the pin forward bit more, let's see.
No idea. Pace it out. It's official, I have no idea what's going on here,
the third shot went exactly the same distance as the second shot and it shouldn't have done,
because I significantly bent the pin forward, I don't get it, I really don't. However,
now resorting to gut instinct I think the pin on the end of the arm might have been a bit long, so
I've cropped a little bit off that, gonna see what happens now, but before we go further, Enola Gaye,
I'm running out of smoke tracers, send some in. And you like out there;
merch. Get your trebuchet t-shirts, help it all keep going.
And.... Nice!
Goodness me.
That is another one that did not go to plan. You're going to see it on
the wide but my goodness the smoke parted company,
clods of earth that I probably should have cleaned off the ball scattered around
and the ball went half distance. So yes, cutting some length of the pin does make a difference.
Shouldn't have done that. Shortening the pin has made a massive, massive difference and that wasn't
really my intention. I think I probably did it without thinking too much, I've got a TV crew
coming in in two days and it really has got to be operational for that however the reason I did
it was the pin was quite long and it was curved around and the shackle on the end of the sling, is
touching that all the way. The longer they're in contact the more chance there is for erraticness
which is what I was getting in the landing of the shots. This is my first trebuchet, I don't know
really what to expect, but it wasn't that, so I've shortened it, which should improve the erraticness
I hope. Fingers crossed. Who knows, I'm wrong about everything else. However it's messed up
the trajectory something rotten, so bent the pin all the way forward again and we'll just get
it.... Well we'll see what happens. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Nice!
oh
That was high, I mean you don't want to be on the other end of that.
Anyway still bit short, but we can bend the pin. It just all I don't know, it feels good, anyway
who cares? Every day's a learning day. I love this thing it's great.
Bent the pin again hopefully that for the last time. Loose!
Love it!
Oh I love this machine! Let's see what it's done. What did I learn today?
Well I learned that I'm not as smart as I thought I was,
these things look simple, they are fiendishly difficult and fiendishly complicated. For all
of my messing about I have managed to get a net loss of three meters,
that's not really the idea of what today was. Anyway what I have also gained though is I feel
that this machine is is behaving much tighter, much cleaner than it was, which is everything that
I wanted it to be. Next time I come back I'm going to tweak that pin a little bit more but right now,
two days time, I got this kids TV science show and that is absolutely fine, we're just playing
games with it, so that distance is fine, it's not a problem. What I can't do is change it
again from now, but next time I come out I'm going to tweek that pin. So i'll see you again.