The tennis coach has requested that we design a "ball server" to use for practice with the tennis team. The device required must fire a sequence of standard tennis balls from one side of a standard tennis court, over the net such that they land and bounce within each of the three court areas labeled 1, 2, 3 in Figure 1. You will have to research the data on the dimensions of the court and the lines thereon to define the sizes of areas 1, 2 and 3.

    The chief engineer has given some thought to this problem and has come up with a design concept for you to investigate. Figure 1 shows a linkage mechanism which will pick up one tennis ball from the bottom of a stack. Grippers on your linkage will grab one ball and attach it temporarily to a point on a coupler of your linkage. The design of the gripper is not a part of this project; assume that it will work. A motor will drive the input crank of your linkage at a constant angular velocity of your choice, which you must specify. At some points in the cycle, defined by you in terms of input crank angles, the "magic grippers" will be caused to release the ball, to let it fly on a ballistic trajectory over the net into the opposite court. You must design this linkage so that there will be at least three points on the ball's coupler path motion each of which, when it is released, will guarantee that the ball will land in a different one of the three tennis court areas.

    You must follow the Design Process to fully define and constrain the problem. You must do Background Research into the problem and any existing solutions. You must create a general Goal Statement. You must generate a list of at least 15 additional Task Specifications. As with any design problem, there is an infinity of solutions possible. You are expected to come up with one solution which will work. To do so you will have to try out many alternate designs and iterate to your 'best' solution. You should expect to typically go through at least ten iterations before arriving at an acceptable one.

    There will be a need for extensive kinematic analysis in this project in addition to the synthesis activities. You are expected to do a complete velocity and acceleration analysis of your design to determine its feasibility and its effects on the ball. In order to make it possible for you to accomplish this task in the short time available, the National Tennis Association has generously made available to you their love-ly computer programs, Fourbar, Fivebar and Sixbar. You may use these programs to analyze your potential design solutions. However, to ensure that you understand your results and to discourage a BFI (or Mackinrow) approach, we require that you include a complete derivation of all equations necessary to the analysis of your design. These must be a general (non-numeric) derivation and you must use your derived equations to numerically check the computer program solutions for a minimum of two positions of your device.

    You are also required to document your solution in a professional engineering report which adheres to the "Project Report Specifications" document previously received. The background data should be written up in the Background Research section. The report will document the process by which you iterated to your final design as well as the design itself. Do not just describe the final result. Rather show me how you arrived at it, including the failures encountered along the way. This will demonstrate to me that you understand the engineering concepts and the relevant course material. Note that unreferenced and un-discussed computer or other illustrations will be considered to be report "filler" and be ignored. Do not put anything in the report unless you discuss its meaning. A summary table of data for your final design must be included in the format shown, and containing this information: