Piezo-electric concept will not work

We spent the last few weeks looking into what we need to build the piezo-electric concept. It turns out that our understanding of the actuators that we were hoping to use isn't near what we would need.

The actuators have a stopping force of 300lbs, but that is at 0.00" displacement.
The controller alone for what we are theorizing would cost up toward $30,000 and the actuators would be $2000 each. Way over our $3000 budget.

This means we will be falling back on our secondary design, the locking spring force applicator. This change late in the semester will set us back a bit.