Today I printed and built a toy catapult that is mostly designed as an interesting teaching aid for STEM projects. The model is created by STEMFIE and is free to download and print.

I thought it’d be fun to show my daughters how the coiled spring holds the tension and when released the ball is launched into the air.

It’s nice that the build includes a small target so you have something that you can aim at. And in this video, I know you won’t believe it, but I hit the target on my first take! That’d never happen again.

The build itself is pretty easy, though I will say I got caught up on a few steps in the build guide. I’m not sure if I misread the steps or if they were slightly wrong, but either way I was able to figure out how to get it built without too much trouble.

I love the fact that it doesn’t require any additional parts or glue which means all you’ve got to do is print the parts. It does take 3 prints to get all the pieces, but none of them were more than a couple of hours on my Bambulabs p1p.

If you print this yourself leave a comment on the video above and let me know.