Backlog: Lego Shotgun Catapult

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I've been busy with school stuff, and I was sick for about a week. Now that I'm done with school for the holidays I'll be posting a lot.

This is a "lost project" because it hasn't been posted anywhere until now. Unlike most of my projects, this one uses no electronics. It's a catapult I made a while back that fires 50 small projectiles (axle pegs) over a wide area. Here's the YouTube video I just posted:

The YouTube video explains what it does, so I'll launch right into an explanation of how it does what it does.
This catapult gets its power from rubber bands, but unlike most catapults the power is transferred through gears. The rubber bands pull back on one lever arm which is connected to a 24 tooth gear. The 24t gear meshes with a 40t gear attached to the main arm. This setup helps to maximize the power of the rubber bands.
Because the small arm has rubber wheels protruding from it, it contacts and stops the main arm just as it reaches a 45 degree angle. This maximizes the range by releasing the projectiles at the best possible time.
The 50 projectiles are held within the holes of 5 parallel beams running up the main arm. Because the axle side of the axle peg projectiles is in the hole they smoothly release most of the time, but sometimes they stick and don't fire or fall short. If this were to be used as a practical weapon, there would have to be a way to keep projectiles from exploding unless they fell far enough away from the catapult.

Backlog: Tempest (a "lost" project)

This is one of my "lost" projects, because I made it a while ago but never posted it anywhere online. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning:

When I discovered Brian Davis's projects, not only did I find his Zamor launchers, but also his Zamor launching tank. Ogre, his tank, is armed with a Hurricane launcher and has sprung plastic treads. Needless to say, that thing is awesome.

Ogre

After I invented the Tornado Launcher, I finally had a good one-motor weapon to put on my own Lego tank. Because this was during the Robotics season where I was building BogieBot, I wasn't content to give my tank a simple tread base. I wanted to give it awesome suspension. Naturally, my first design used rocker bogie suspension. That turned out terribly, because my tread base was too small and my center of gravity too high. That is, it tipped over really easily. Here's a picture of my original design without its treads:

Original design:

After that design failed, I had a stroke of inspiration. Suspension should allow the treads to bend around the terrain without breaking the frame, so why not just make a bendable frame? You may know this suspension style from Maelstrom, but this came first, and this was where I invented it. Tempest turned out awesome, and although I didn't show the Tornado Launcher firing in the movie Tempest had it and could use it.

Tempest movie:

It's kind of incredible (as in unbelievable) that I left this thing unposted, because it was awesome, but I think I know why. Shortly after I built this, my robotics team realized that BogieBot needed to be revamped, and I spent nearly all my time for a few weeks on rebuilding or reprogramming it. During that time I posted 4 YouTube videos of BogieBot. No wonder Tempest got lost in the rush!