CMU engineering students build T-shirt cannons for Jackalopes baseball team
When the Grand Junction Jackalopes, a minor league baseball team, reached out to the CMU Department of Computer Science and Engineering to partner on building T-shirt cannons from scratch it seemed like a long shot. But a few short months later the Jackalopes debuted the student-engineered T-shirt cannons at the 2025 season home opener much to the fans delight.
“We figured why not reach out to CMU and use the brainpower that we have here in the community to help support a local, small business like the Jackalopes,” said Jackalopes President Harrison Shapiro. “We reached out to Professor Penick over at the CMU engineering department and he was very excited about including this in his curriculum.”
Associate Professor of Engineering Chris Penick assigned the project to his First-Year Project class of 26 students. The aspiring engineers split into five teams and during the spring 2025 semester designed, developed and built five unique working T-shirt cannons.
With Penick’s guidance, the teams overcame many obstacles throughout the process including back ordered pieces, exploding parts, loose seals and malfunctioning components.
The teams also had few but lofty parameters: how to get enough loft and distance, how to perfectly roll a T-shirt to get the right seal, how to launch multiple shirts in a short timeframe and how to make the cannon portable and easy to use.
“It was interesting given the very few sets of parameters, because it (needed to be made for) under $250 dollars, 5-10 T-shirts launched within the span of 60 seconds, between 50- and 100-feet length wise, about 20 feet high at least to get over the netting,” said engineering student Vivian Howerton, who helped create the Grand Slammer from team Mech Mavericks.
Students worked alongside the Jackalopes staff through project demonstrations, usability tests and the Student Showcase to continue to refine their designs and make them more functional.
“It was a point of realization where it was like, ‘ok, this is no longer just like a little project,’” said Ford Powell, engineering student on the Mech Mavericks team. “We took a prototype, modeled it, purchased a bunch of parts, we put it together, and we got it to fire and now we’re standing on the field where it’s going to hopefully live a very long life over many seasons with the Jackalopes.”
The students benefited from practical experience and the Jackalopes have a new way to engage their fans. It might have been a long shot but in the end all five teams succeeded in building functional T-shirt cannons.