Thing-a-day, Day 17: Foam Pitching Machine

This night’s creation is a pitching machine to fling pieces of foam. This was accomplished by using the flywheel and small motor from an old tape deck. The main issues were that the wooden holes became elongated, which caused the device to vibrate, and that the DC motor did not rotate at an acceptable speed. Although this particular design did not work out too well, I did like how everything came together to achieve a relatively stable motor-flywheel interface, and I was happy that I figured out how to make a pulley using two washers and another piece from the tape deck.
The motivation for this is to make a desk contraption that can be remotely controlled to fling little things towards unsuspecting office mates. I think a better way to accomplish this would be to use a can of compressed air, so that is what I will try next time.