Had a quick play with an idea for a cane striking mechanism design, no where near complete but anyway something to work with.
Uses a heavy duty rubber band for the hit power and a DC worm drive actuator to draw the pull arm back. I added a slip cam to the end so when it reaches maximum pull it simply slips off to release the arm and the rubber band slaps the cane down. The actuator then fully extends slipping the cam back around the end of the pull arm ready for the next strike.
This could be easily bolted to the side of my ladder rig and positioned as needed for a good ass hit.
Add a nice little controller to adjust speed of reset and number of hits etc and it could be rather efficient, lol...
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