His trebuchet launched a 4 gram projectile at 776 miles per hour.
That's obviously extremely lightweight for trebuchet payload, but for comparison, his projectile is approximately 62 grains so approximately twice as heavy as 30 grain high speed 22LR rounds. And approximately 1.5 times as heavy as 40 grain subsonic rounds.
Seems like such an advance in this ancient technology. It would be really cool to see it applied in interesting ways.
I really wonder just how effective this could be as a defense system .. the mind wanders with every update Tom makes .. I imagine an aiming/targetting system would make this an effective, easily replenished, low-resource weapon system for some applications. Attacking feral animals, perhaps?
How could an auto-loader work for this .. I'm sure there's a means.
Another thing that I keep thinking about, is whether this would be an effective way to launch seed-bombs, or deal with avalanche conditions on a mountain without requiring fire-arms training.
A truly fascinating bit of engineering. I hope to see it evolve into an effective delivery mechanism.
You'd need trebuchet training instead, which is probably not better in the long run. I bet there's still lots of ways to kill/mangle yourself with one of these, especially once you've been around them long enough to get casual and sloppy.
I don’t think this has much practical application as an entire system. Nor is it supposed to. It was built just to achieve and artificial goal with arbitrary constraints. That doesn’t make it any less cool or interesting, but that doesn’t make it useful.
Some of the features he used are pretty cool though, like varying the winding drum diameter to vary the delivered torque over the course of the weight drop.
I also loved the video. But I'd think if one wanted to deploy "simple" mechanical projectile weapons at scale, pneumatic launchers would be easier, more compact and more reliable (way less cool-looking and operating, though!).
Basically anyone can go buy a pellet rifle that will easily and consistently clear 1500fps. They're still pretty cool, and will go through both doors of a car
I helped design the "reloadable" part of a golf-ball shooter that used acetylene as the accelerant. I don't think it went supersonic, though. There's videos (embarassing ones) on youtube. He eventually designed one that can shoot full cans of monster energy hundreds of yards.
the reason i bring it up is we used to design and build pneumatic ones, that could send C and D batteries thousands of feet if you arced it right. that was with ~125psi, we always wanted to build out to 200+ psi, but instead went into accelerant-based cannons and he got a job doing machine drawing with autocad. the rest is history.
Sorry to be a bore [that's a firearms joke], but -- while I encourage everyone and their family to experiment with building such devices, with safety in mind of course, it is a lot of fun -- please don't dispose of your old batteries in the natural environment!
Really not trying to call you out here, as a teenager I once had the idea to load up my marble cannon with dead AAs (they're free!) and got a "do you really think that's a good idea?" from an environmentally conscious adult when I went asking for dead batteries.
I dunno, takes a lot of energy to get a pneumatic system up to the same speeds that this trebuchet can accomplish. I see it really as a super-efficient machine requiring very little effort to load ..
But yeah, the fact that it's super cool looking - and sounding - is a key factor in my willingness to play with one too, one day. ;)
the "shot you've been waiting for" was sort of anticlimactic, but the two plywood arm shots after show what it actually sounds like. I think the grass and tree dulled the sound a lot on the metal arm.
I actually have a camera that can shoot that at high speed (1200fps), but i'm sure other people have better cameras these days, mine has very low resolution.
How do you responsibly test something like this? The payload isn't going to follow a ballistic trajectory, it's going to follow an aerodynamic one. You'd probably have to design something special to load into it to aim the damned thing.
Which is a road trip to some place very empty in something like a 180º arc. Maybe 225º.
Very early in the video, he explains that while previous builds used steel ball-bearings, that's not responsible at these energy levels, so he switches to lightweight balls made of biodegradable plastic. There's comparatively little energy in the projectile after release, and it's only supersonic for a few feet.
Further, you test in an enormous empty field, as he's doing.
He has fairly specific mechanically timed release control over it — within 0.5 degrees.
But he also used an extremely lightweight ball projectile — a few grams of 3D printed plastic — because he was only interested in the launch speed. And he pointed it in a direction where there were no people for miles.
He explains that the field he is shooting towards is over 5km of empty field. He also started his tests with much lower weight and speed to ensure proper behavior before getting up to full speed.
His trebuchet launched a 4 gram projectile at 776 miles per hour.
That's obviously extremely lightweight for trebuchet payload, but for comparison, his projectile is approximately 62 grains so approximately twice as heavy as 30 grain high speed 22LR rounds. And approximately 1.5 times as heavy as 40 grain subsonic rounds.
Here's a direct link to the video, to avoid the blogspam cruft...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co57SfcT-h0
Seems like such an advance in this ancient technology. It would be really cool to see it applied in interesting ways.
I really wonder just how effective this could be as a defense system .. the mind wanders with every update Tom makes .. I imagine an aiming/targetting system would make this an effective, easily replenished, low-resource weapon system for some applications. Attacking feral animals, perhaps?
How could an auto-loader work for this .. I'm sure there's a means.
Another thing that I keep thinking about, is whether this would be an effective way to launch seed-bombs, or deal with avalanche conditions on a mountain without requiring fire-arms training.
A truly fascinating bit of engineering. I hope to see it evolve into an effective delivery mechanism.
> without requiring fire-arms training.
You'd need trebuchet training instead, which is probably not better in the long run. I bet there's still lots of ways to kill/mangle yourself with one of these, especially once you've been around them long enough to get casual and sloppy.
I don’t think this has much practical application as an entire system. Nor is it supposed to. It was built just to achieve and artificial goal with arbitrary constraints. That doesn’t make it any less cool or interesting, but that doesn’t make it useful.
Some of the features he used are pretty cool though, like varying the winding drum diameter to vary the delivered torque over the course of the weight drop.
All of these things are thoroughly solved problems with embarrassing levels of cost effectiveness, far from interesting.
Please keep your thinly veiled murder fantasies to yourself
Or we can just accept it as a cool gimmick, we don't have to kill animals with supersonic trebuchets really
I also loved the video. But I'd think if one wanted to deploy "simple" mechanical projectile weapons at scale, pneumatic launchers would be easier, more compact and more reliable (way less cool-looking and operating, though!).
Basically anyone can go buy a pellet rifle that will easily and consistently clear 1500fps. They're still pretty cool, and will go through both doors of a car
like a potato cannon?
I helped design the "reloadable" part of a golf-ball shooter that used acetylene as the accelerant. I don't think it went supersonic, though. There's videos (embarassing ones) on youtube. He eventually designed one that can shoot full cans of monster energy hundreds of yards.
the reason i bring it up is we used to design and build pneumatic ones, that could send C and D batteries thousands of feet if you arced it right. that was with ~125psi, we always wanted to build out to 200+ psi, but instead went into accelerant-based cannons and he got a job doing machine drawing with autocad. the rest is history.
edit: https://nextcloud.projectftm.com/index.php/s/cobra5x we show off the part i designed, toward the end on the "reload" - he designed and built the entire thing.
Sorry to be a bore [that's a firearms joke], but -- while I encourage everyone and their family to experiment with building such devices, with safety in mind of course, it is a lot of fun -- please don't dispose of your old batteries in the natural environment!
Really not trying to call you out here, as a teenager I once had the idea to load up my marble cannon with dead AAs (they're free!) and got a "do you really think that's a good idea?" from an environmentally conscious adult when I went asking for dead batteries.
I dunno, takes a lot of energy to get a pneumatic system up to the same speeds that this trebuchet can accomplish. I see it really as a super-efficient machine requiring very little effort to load ..
But yeah, the fact that it's super cool looking - and sounding - is a key factor in my willingness to play with one too, one day. ;)
Drone defense? :-)
Also (mentioned by Tom), this elastic-powered supersonic trebuchet is an excellent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdXOS-B0Bus
the "shot you've been waiting for" was sort of anticlimactic, but the two plywood arm shots after show what it actually sounds like. I think the grass and tree dulled the sound a lot on the metal arm.
I actually have a camera that can shoot that at high speed (1200fps), but i'm sure other people have better cameras these days, mine has very low resolution.
Scientific research systems like the SCARF achieve 156.3 trillion fps but at greatly reduced spatial resolutions.
How do you responsibly test something like this? The payload isn't going to follow a ballistic trajectory, it's going to follow an aerodynamic one. You'd probably have to design something special to load into it to aim the damned thing.
Which is a road trip to some place very empty in something like a 180º arc. Maybe 225º.
Very early in the video, he explains that while previous builds used steel ball-bearings, that's not responsible at these energy levels, so he switches to lightweight balls made of biodegradable plastic. There's comparatively little energy in the projectile after release, and it's only supersonic for a few feet.
Further, you test in an enormous empty field, as he's doing.
He has fairly specific mechanically timed release control over it — within 0.5 degrees.
But he also used an extremely lightweight ball projectile — a few grams of 3D printed plastic — because he was only interested in the launch speed. And he pointed it in a direction where there were no people for miles.
He explains that the field he is shooting towards is over 5km of empty field. He also started his tests with much lower weight and speed to ensure proper behavior before getting up to full speed.
It's shooting 3d printed balls, I imagine they don't stay supersonic for very long. Significantly less dangerous to others than driving a car.
You'll shoot your eye out, kid.
It's absurdist to be concerned about this and be okay driving a car from a total harm to society perspective.
Merry Christmas
This guy absolutely amazing to watch. He also has a 2nd channel that I only found out a few weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/@TimStation
Not only is it a funny name it also appears in my subscriptions list alphabetically right below the main channel.
Projects like this are inspiring. Love it.
I should build something this weekend…