I would like to build a juggling machine that can juggle at least 3 balls and mimic the 2d motion of human hands without worrying about the arms. So I need 2d motion that is very fast (and accurate). It would be kind of like this machine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9asDO_1A27UI was thinking that something like the following linear motor configuration would be great (except I would want two 2d bots instead of one 3d bot):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9asDO_1A27UThe problem with linear motors is that they are REALLY expensive. I am willing to spend around $2,000, but with quotes that I have gotten on linear motor prices, my budget would be off by an order of magnitude. I was wondering if there is some other way that I could do this without spending more than $2,000.
I did some calculations, and it looks like I will need something that will be able to move at 3m/s (or actually 8m/s preferable if I want it to throw at different heights). The max acceleration would need to be 17m/s^2 (or 60m/s^2 preferable). Does anyone have any ideas? Linear actuators are generally slow, and the fast ones seems to be expensive. Maybe there is some servo that I can use with belt or gears to get the speed/acceleration that I want? The other piece of information is that the balls would be about 100g, so that would be the load.
thanks!
-Nathan