Ping Pong Ball Hopper @MFUKLC

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An open challenge has been set for the UK Maker Faire this year. Titled the Mega Fun UK Lasercut Challenge (@MFUKLC) the goal is to fire as many ping pong balls as possible at a target in a 30 second time frame.

Well the challenge has been set and busy or not there is no real way we can ignore it so I've had to get my thinking cap on. The competition states that we're only allowed to use an A0 sheet of material which means optimising all the parts to use the smallest amount of material possible. This is a first attempt at a ball hopper, my current launcher design has a lot of capacity but relies on a steady feed of balls so the hopper must hold as many balls as possible and allow them all out in an orderly fashion. This design is easily extendible to include as many rows/columns as required (svg here)


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