T-shirt Launcher

I began work on a T-shirt Launcher in the spring of 2020, as an ISA associated project

ISA or the International Society of Automation, is a organization that is involved in fluid power, plc's, and other autonomous systems.

One of my professors noticed that T-shirt launchers are very basic mechanically but rather expensive and thus suggested that we elect a few ISA members to try and tackle the construction of a much cheaper launcher. I was one of the two members who volunteered.

Preliminary research showed that the easiest method would be to create the body out of pvc piping, and refill the air tank shot using a standard consumer level air compressor. An example of this is shown below.

This design, while functional, was clumsy and so we decided to instead repurpose a paintball grade CO2 tank, as our air reservoir.

This allowed for much better maneuverability as well as greatly increasing the number of shots possible without refilling.

We opted for a manual release valve to simplify the design. CO2 is passed through a regulator into the holding tank which can safely hold up to 80 PSI.

Once the desired pressure is reached you can use the needle valve to stop incoming pressure, and turn the valve as seen below.

We plan to shoot it at a Murray State Game in the near future to spread awareness for the ISA. The project is fully functional we are just waiting for final approval.

Future goals include switching the material from PVC to aluminum to shrink the design, allowing for the operator to quickly adjust the nozzle size allowing the operator to adapt to different sized projectiles: Shirts, Beanies, headbands etc. Additionally I plan to integrate led strips on the barrel to better emphasize the launches. A proof of concept for this is shown below.