Catapult Arm

I helped the Additive Manufacturing Professor design this project as we were repairing one of the SLA printers in the lab. We wanted to create an interactive project where students could compete against each other with their designs now that they knew how to use both FDM and SLA printers. We gave them a model to start with which they could add to, remove from, and optimize as they pleased and told them that we were looking for the lightest catapult arm that could throw a 5g mass the furthest. The only restriction we placed was that they could not change the geometry at the end of the arm that interfaced with the rest of the catapult. Above are different stages of the arm I designed, and below are some of the students' results and the catapult that we used for testing them.