Martinus--
Thanks! It is a fun project to do, and even more fun to ride!
Preface: I'm not a structural engineer, and may have made mistakes. If you are a structural engineer, feel free to point out any mistakes!
The basic reason it is failing right now, as far as I understand it, is that there is ~100lbs of force on the rear from the weight of the rider, which gets magnified by about 8x by the arrangement, which then is concentrated on a tiny itsy-bitsy area where the cam and cam follower come into contact.
According to Hertz theory, we can compute the amount of pressure given the radii of the cam and cam follower and a few other parameters.
Without boring with a lot of math, in the first prototype, this maximum pressure comes out to about ~190,000 psi, which exceeds the strength of the material... by a lot (the yield strength of 6061 is ~16,000 psi)!
So, the obvious things to do are to:
Change the material (use steel which has a higher yield strength),
Lower the mechanical advantage of the system (i.e. increase the height of the tab to which the ball-end is attached),
Increase the height of the cam and cam follower
Increase the diameter of the cam follower (helps up to the point that height of cam and the height of the cam follower are equal).
Add a shock absorber to help handle bumps (it absorbs the pressure instead of the cam).
Anyway... that is likely what is happening with rev #2!