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Adaptive Creepy Vine Baseball Bat

3d printed adaptive baseball bat / apendage
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I picked up the tip of a creepy, invasive, super vine today, on a walk, as I passed a little copse of new growth forest that had popped up in one of the few non-paved parts of the sea of concrete that I live in, and the tip of the creeper, as I spun it between my thumb and forefinger, took on a life of its own and looked just like the live tips of vines look in those time-lapse videos of the creepers looking for purchase on a nearby spine-possessing plant. F-ing creepers, they should learn to do push-ups and go to church, that would take care of their problem. "Make your bed every morning!" That's what I tell the creepers in my life.

So anyway, the creepy, spineless, communist-manifesto- reading, vine tip in my hand was moving as if it was alive, and, in thinking about how it was pulling that off, I came upon the idea of an adaptive baseball bat, that could translate the whip-like motion of a baseball swing.

So this could be built, like the vine probably is, of a bunch of concentric tubes of increasing cross- section, with lubrication in between, with the center-most piece being a solid string attached at one end to a relatively massive weight at the end of the bat and at the other to some further-UP body part like the elbow, while the outside tubes are manipulated by further-OUT body parts like the hands. The result would hopefully be a bat that moved like a vine tip -- the principle being the same as a chicken foot or finger and tendon, but with a weight at the end for maximum impact. It would hopefully be like Iron-Man-punching a baseball.

Also the material could be varied in density and flexibility by 3d printing, so that the business end of the bat could be weighted and hard, to optimize its ability to convey energy to the ball, and the rest of the bat could get more flexible as it went toward the handle.

Adaptive Creepy Vine Bat

JesusHChrist, Jun 02 2014

Bat, vine, not creepy... http://thewere42.wo...ts-is-to-love-them/
[normzone, Jun 02 2014]

time-lapse of vine tip growing, http://www.youtube....watch?v=1lsHBRfQi5Y
with baseball commercial before (when I watched it) [JesusHChrist, Jun 03 2014]

[link]






       The Communist Manifesto is actually quite bracing. The really lazy people are the ones who pretend to have read it, but haven't.   

       Also - "incrementally increasing"? You mean, " ... as opposed to the *other* way of increasing"?
pertinax, Jun 02 2014
  

       Things such as the height of a person can increase continuously, rather than incrementally.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 02 2014
  

       Been hanging out with Merlin Tuttle? (link)
normzone, Jun 02 2014
  

       Increments can be continuous, they don't have to be discrete.
pertinax, Jun 03 2014
  
      
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