PRESENT WORK

I'm building a large Ball Wall for the Westchester Children's Museum in New York. It's 20 feet long and 10 feet high. At each end there is a hand cranked conveyor belt that lifts and drops the street hockey balls into a spinning wheel that launches them. The user controls the speed and angle they are thrown, and they aim at the basketball nets. The whole wall has a plexiglass front so the balls never escape.

Here is a sequence of images and a video for prototyping the mechanism that will reliably feed the balls.

I tried multiple pitching machines and none were right. Bought industrial variable speed motors, and a perfectly balanced tire and wheel from a maker of one of the pitching machines I bought. Here's a video of the prototyping success.

After protoyping, I decided for a

conveyor instead of a feed wheel.

Getting really close to finishing final conveyors and launchers. The motor is not shown here. It will be on this side, visible in a clear box. Onwards!