Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

We were looking back to some of this year's designs for shooters and we noticed that some teams drove their wheels through a shaft.

Our team was wondering how exactly you drive a wheel off a shaft via a CIM-ulator with an 8mm keyed output shaft similar to that on a CIM motor.

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

We did something similar and used a 8mm to 8mm shaft coupler that we got off McMaster to drive another shaft which the wheel was on.

Later we custom made a gearbox that had an extra long 3/8 keyed shaft that was used with an AM hub.

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

Any pictures from the first version...

Which coupler from McMaster?

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

Have you seen the AM 8mm key hub? We didn't do anything more complex than direct drive off the CIM-u-lator shaft. Worked well enough once we got our wheel balanced.

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

We used a 1/2 inch coupler from Grainger and lathed the other end of the shaft down to 1/4 inch for an encoder. The set screws work fine, but I wish we had a continuous shaft from the gearbox or a hex axle instead. We used a different motor and gearbox than you though. It was a banebots 775 with a 4:1 gearbox and it has worked pretty well.

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

We used a CIM-SIM, but same concept. CIM-SIM > Coupling > 1/2" Keyed Shaft with wheels on 1/2" keyed bore AM hubs.

Just search "shaft couplings" on McMaster and you can drill down to what you need. We used a helical beam coupler that allows for a little bit of angular/axial/parallel misalignment, but a standard coupling would work fine as well.

It's part number 9061K163, 5/16" is close enough to 8mm (0.0025") that it worked fine. They're made by Ruland, who provides the shaft collars in the KoP. Pickier people could use the metric to metric versions and turn down their output shaft for a closer fit, but the clamp style makes it unnecessary in my eyes.

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

So basically we could do

CIM-ulator ----- 8mm AM hub ----- directly to wheel???

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

Our team used a belt, mainly because we needed the reduction from the cimulator. A pleasant side effect was that we could use a larger shaft for the shooting wheel.

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

This year we used:


CIM Motor ----- 8mm hub ----- S35-26LE Sprocket
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S35-26LE Sprocket ----- wheel

this was all inside "our box"

So I was wondering how exactly I could do this outside "our box." So could we use a keyed shaft to control our wheel instead with the same setup?

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz...s4zo6_1280.jpg

Edit: image was to massive so I just posted the link :P

Our shooter from last year, the coupler is McMaster: 2469K2
And we sourced 8mm keyed shaft stock from McMaster as well; the wheel has an 8mm AM hub.

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

So basically:

gearbox (with longer shaft?)----hub----coupler----shaft----wheel

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

Possibly a bit unstable. Better to try a solution like the photo above where the flywheel shaft and wheel are supported on both sides by something other than the gearbox itself. Otherwise that's a pretty big unsupported side load on the gearbox.

Lots of options, all just variations on the same theme. Gearbox shaft > coupler > flywheel shaft. It just depends what you have on hand, your feelings about metric hardware, and whether you have access to a lathe.

cimulator > 8mm to 8mm shaft coupler > 8mm shaft with 8mm AM hubs
cimulator > 5/16" to 1/2" shaft coupler > 1/2" shaft with 1/2" AM hubs

If you want to avoid keys you could also use a hex shaft with the end turned down to match a shaft coupler, and then use the AM hex hubs for the wheel.

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

More or less, but the wheels attach to the hubs and go on the shafts. The CIM-SIM and Cim-u-lator output shafts are plenty long to fit a coupler, no modifications needed.

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

It was
Gearbox [with regular shaft] one end of the coupler goes to this shaft; then longer shaft goes to the other end of the coupler; then the wheel with the hub goes on that shaft. We supported the shaft with a bearing block at the end.

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

Thanks guys

We are trying to prepare for next season by learning as much as we can.

We are going to try to modify our shooter by using CIMulator instead of a CIM motor direct to the hub.

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

Hm if you guys have the machining to do so I would definitely look at designing and building a custom gear box. We used the CIMCIM parts but in a package that was more suited to fit onto our robot. It wasn't a lot of work and came out nice.
http://team3647.tumblr.com/post/22956859964

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

Depends on your mounting solution I suppose. The CIM-u-lators have two bearings supporting the output shaft, so they're fairly robust. We have one CIM-u-lator on each side of the wheel and haven't had any problems. Full disclosure: we only attended one regional this year, so I can't comment on how it might hold up during an extended season, but we've had a good amount of out-of-competition drive time, both during and after the season.

I would definitely want to otherwise support the shaft if it's being driven directly from a motor, though.

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

the wheels attach to the hubs and go on the shafts

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

No Way? I've been doing it wrong all this time, darn :(

-RC

*reported

Re: Shooter off of Live Shaft
 

This is our current setup with the exception of the sprocket setup in the first picture