Overview
The assignment was a tennis-ball launcher with a maximum range of 10 meters, any more was supposed to be difficult. We decided that wasn’t enough and built a pneumatic cannon that launches projectiles over 60 meters.
Build
The cannon is built from PVC piping, wood, duct tape, and epoxy, pressurized with a bicycle tire pump. Getting there meant pressure research to size the chamber, CAD models in Fusion 360 and Onshape, and a lot of hands-on work, such as hand sawing, PVC solvent welding, and epoxy joints.
Result
60+ meters of range from a hand-pumped chamber, and a hard lesson in the difference between a CAD model and a thing you can actually manufacture.