Designing the Hook

Had a number of successes yesterday, biggest is that I developed a way to propel the car.  👊


The next two big hurdles to clear are how do I release the car from the string and then how do I alter the design so that the car will stop at 20 feet.

Today's goal is to get the car released from the string.  After that I can work on manipulating variables so that I can control the stopping distance.

My original plan was to design the hook in Fusion360 and then print.  But before doing that I decided to make a hook with cardboard etc. to look at the functionality of it first.

When I started with the cardboard, I realized that I couldn't visualize how the hook would look so I took a step even further back and decided to build with paper first.

Here are my supplies...

And my first types of hooks...(paper, then cardboard)

and my trial run...

And the hook didn't release.  I made the bend at a random angle which may have been to low to release, so I am going to try to make the bend more vertical.  I also think that string may have got caught on the roughness of the cardboard edge, so I am going to put a layer of tape over that as well.  

New angle and tape worked well...

Next to put it all together and see if I can get the full set-up to run.