While at 11th St Workshop I helped fabricate a rapid basketball dropping mechanism for a Verizon commercial. The project called for a device that would hold multiple basketballs and then drop them into a giant hoop one after the other in a rapid succession.
I helped assemble the ball holding chamber and was tasked with the challenge of creating a mechanism that would release the balls. The mechanism also had to be able to quickly stop the flow of basketballs. I came up with a reliable spring loaded rod system that was activated by a pull string. When the string was pulled the rod released the basketballs and when the string was released the springs pushed the rod back and blocked the exit way.