Launcher Design flaws (Weekly Progress part 1)

Initial launcher design

We met with Mr. Lin this week to discuss the materials list we had posted recently. He had some concerns with the design of our launcher. Firstly, the connection between the pipe that would hold ammunition and the main pipe had a very small amount of surface area, which would make it a weak connection. This would hold some risk in the future, as it might be easily breakable. A possible alternative to this was using a T shaped connector, and attaching pipes to both sides of that to act as the barrel (this is shown on the left side of the white board). But then there's the problem of there not being a smooth connection between all three pipe pieces.
Secondly, there was the problem of the triggering mechanism. The original design was to use a motor powered arm to push back a lever, storing potential spring energy in a spring at the end of the main pipe, then the arm would move back forward, releasing the lever and therefore the spring. Mr. Lin pointed out that the problem with this was that it would require a lot of force to push back that lever, making it a slow process to trigger the launcher. Slow firing/reload speed would be a major risk later on; if our launcher missed its first shot it might be too late to fire a second one. Mr. Lin suggested that we look into a "latch" firing system, like ones that are used in fire arms. They don't require a lot of force to fire, and are therefore much faster.