Floating axle king arthur trebuchet Final build

had to remove the old post after deleting the original saves , I rebuilt the whole thing and currently hit up to 80 blocks away, while testing I noticed that after the projectile traveled around 80 blocks it lost all horizontal momentum and dropped straight down. I can only guess at what causes this but if Keen can fix projectiles to travel realistically through the air higher ranges are definitely achievable.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406485636

 

very impressive!

 

I saw the earlier addition of this. Some really impressive work! Can I ask what you do as a job? Something to do with engineering maybe?

 

Now that is a massive trebuchet! I am impressed you got something of that scale to work mechanically.

 

Thanks davet111, I'm a carpenter but engineering has always piqued my interest and this game is great for tinkering. And with these amazing weekly updates it will only get better.

Yea spectercody, any larger and it starts failing due to the extreme weight, catch blocks get ripped apart or the arm leans to the side and hits the rail when fired.


also it turns out the new axle i made for the throwing arm can be re-purposed for a train or mine cart. it's incredibly stable and the torsion spring beam attached to the wheels keep it from shifting on the track. I'm currently working on a cable car design as well as a complex mine cart system with storage.

 

recent updates have some how made this build unstable which I am currently working on. Good news is that projectiles have gone almost 300 large blocks while testing.

 

At least with the new update you'll be able to hurl projectiles at friends almost 300 blocks away

 

Fancy a stone lobbing contest some time? My treb is nearly finished just need to improve consistancy. Range is usually 5-600 metres with the occasional fluke of 750 metres!

Out of interest how many weights in the counterweight? My one is using 508...

 

That would be great! Assuming that my rig is stable enough in MP. I've been busy lately, with few hours for gaming, but I have started adjusting it since the last update. When I complete it I will update the workshop files and demo video

 

Excellent.... have to agree about stability in multiplayer though! Very much russian roullette!

 

I've been able to put some work into improving my original design. So far I've scaled it down to about half the size of the first build, this was necessary due to the extreme weight and the rope drums inability to actually lift the counterweight. The smaller version is still being tested but I have been able to achieve the same range as the first build, which is roughly 350 ish blocks. The map I have it built on is actually too small, the rock goes from the mountains on one side to over the ridge on the other side so I will be placing it on a new and larger world. The one issue I need to work on is reloading it. I have some Ideas kicking around on how to do that but it is proving difficult.

 

The locking rope drums really help with reloading but its gonna be hard work operating it single handed!

 

I've been working on making it as user friendly as possible so one or two people can operate it smoothly. In the original design the throwing arm had catch blocks in the center that were connected to the axles, which caused the catch block pin to rotate very fast due to friction from the weight creating some instability and and occasionally would make the whole rig explode. When I rebuilt a smaller version of it I didn't place catch blocks in the throwing arm, so when the pin in the catch blocks in the axles rotate the throwing arm does as well. This will allow me to build a gear/clutch system using a rotor to rearm with ease. The reload time on my first design was around 5 minutes with 4 different sets of rope drums to hoist the huge arm into place, with this improved design I hope to have a maximum of 2 rope drum sets to lift the weight up. I'm still working on the gear system but it may be possible to only need rope drums to pull the slack or hold the arm in place once the rotors have done most of the work. Here are some images showing the old version, and the improvements made on the new version with more to come in the future.

First version Axle





New axle without catch blocks in the throwing arm





Throwing arm hinge on the first build





Improved hinge on the second version





Mock up of the gear that will rearm the rig (WIP)

 

Love this build! Can't wait to see the video of the new version in action.

 

Still working on the build to make it survival ready but this is what I have so far

 

Looking good! Great stable design by the looks of it too!