At one time, the storage capability of compact discs (CDs) appeared unimaginably giant. Who might presumably want tons of of megabytes of storage on a single detachable disc? And other than the capability, the rainbow created by gentle diffraction on the floor of a CD let you recognize that you simply have been trying on the future. However as these items all the time go, that future is now the previous. A complete era has grown up since that point with smaller, sooner, and higher detachable storage media like SD playing cards. The CD has now been relegated to the cut price bin in second-hand shops.
YouTuber Aaed Musa not too long ago acquired his arms on a big amount of Mini CDs. Having been born within the 2000s, Musa initially checked out them with confusion earlier than realizing that they’re clearly ammunition for an archaic wrist-mounted gadget meant to slice fruit and water balloons. Sadly, the civilization that created this gadget should have existed way back, and no launchers appear to have survived these a few years. So Musa got down to recreate what it should have seemed like.
Being a relic of a time so long gone, it was not all that troublesome to breed it with at the moment’s know-how. The launcher itself is just a flat plate with a flywheel spinning simply above it. Powered by a drone motor, the flywheel can simply spin at as much as 40,000 RPMs. However Musa shortly realized that above a sure pace, the CD will slip beneath the wheel, inflicting it to be ejected with much less drive.
After mapping out ejection speeds, Musa discovered the optimum vary. Not fairly content material with the outcome, a second flywheel was added to extend the pace with out slippage. This had the impact of accelerating the launch pace from about 17 miles per hour to over 27 miles per hour. The flywheels have been additionally angled such that the CDs would spin after being launched, which gave them the gyroscopic stability they wanted to remain on course.
For speedy fireplace enjoyable, Musa additionally 3D-printed {a magazine} for the launcher. A spring-loaded hopper holds 25 CDs, and an RC servo motor pushes out one after the other, proper beneath the primary flywheel, which whisks it away. A powerful firing fee of 5 CDs per second was achieved utilizing this methodology.
Initially, a 3D-printed wrist mount was created. That may be a good possibility, to make sure, however plastic simply doesn’t look as cool as steel. So Musa had a steel model produced with a CNC machine. That provides the launcher the look of a weapon that belongs in Terminator 2 , however in actuality, this far-less-than-lethal launcher is significantly better suited to enjoying a spherical of Fruit Ninja in actual life.
Musa digs into the maths and physics of the construct within the mission video, but when that isn’t your factor, don’t fear — you may fast-forward to the destruction of fruit and water balloons, and a few heroic feats of CD marksmanship.
So that is what CDs are for… (📷: Aaed Musa)
Take that, banana! (📷: Aaed Musa)
Launching CDs could lead to knowledge loss (📷: Aaed Musa)
