Linear Path Shooter vs. Circular Path Shooter?
 

Has anyone considered a linear path shooter for their design?

Everything I've seen on YouTube is built with a circular path. I'm curious if this was for design convenience or there is some magic to the disc following a circular path. My team has proposed creating a linear path shooter with two parallel motors to "spin" the disc down the launch path. Has anyone tried this? If it works, it would make a nice compact shooter.

Re: Linear Path Shooter vs. Circular Path Shooter?
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT88vWTYgj0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyE4Ir6dkY8

Re: Linear Path Shooter vs. Circular Path Shooter?
 

Beaten to the punch, but:

http://www.youtube.com/user/robotin3days

in particular

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyE4I...SDSA& index=2

Re: Linear Path Shooter vs. Circular Path Shooter?
 

A circular path shooter allows more distance while the disc is in contact with your shooter wheel. This will allow the disc to speed up to more closely match your shooter wheel speed. That isn't necessarily good or bad. Last year it was important because you needed very consistent speed and spin.

This year, I'm guessing not so much.

Re: Linear Path Shooter vs. Circular Path Shooter?
 

A linear shooter seems, from all that I've seen, much easier to deal with. Easier to load, easier to fit, and potentially easier to manufacture (you've got to get that curve just right, and keep it that way).

This comes at the expense of being slightly less accurate and slightly less powerful. Our team hasn't made it that far into the prototyping stage yet, so I can only speak from what I've seen others do.

Re: Linear Path Shooter vs. Circular Path Shooter?
 

As has been said, its a matter of contact speed.

The circular pathway allows more contact time between your spinning wheel and the frisbee. This gives the wheel more time to accelerate the frisbee to more closely match its own tangential velocity.

In a linear pathway, the wheel touches the frisbee for a fraction of a second; thus, a fraction of the speed of the wheel is delivered to the frisbee.

Of course, there's dark magic with various other variables such as the compression of the frisbee, space between wheel and a guide rail, type of wheel, surface area of wheel, as well as the torque and speed of the accompanying motor.

It's a matter of testing :)

Re: Linear Path Shooter vs. Circular Path Shooter?
 

What says the linear shooter only touches the frisbee at the tangential point of the wheel? I can think of a way to have the frisbee in contact with the mechanism for a longer period of time.

Re: Linear Path Shooter vs. Circular Path Shooter?
 

Please elaborate?

Re: Linear Path Shooter vs. Circular Path Shooter?
 

A linear pathway with a belt along the length to give the spin and forward speed might just do it.

Re: Linear Path Shooter vs. Circular Path Shooter?
 

So you're going to run a linear belt, essentially a conveyor on it's side, at thousands of rpm and expect that to work the same as a wheel going thousands of rpm?

Re: Linear Path Shooter vs. Circular Path Shooter?
 

We built a prototype and it had two parallel wheels as you were saying you might try. I must add that it was in a linear fashion. But what i really want to tell you is that the frisbees go much further if one side is stationary compared to both sides spinning. Additionally our team has not tried to make a half circle shooter design only a linear so i can not take about that aspect of your question. What i can ask you is why would you use a half circle shooter that takes up much more space especially this year with smaller robots rather then building a linear shooter that works just as well?

Re: Linear Path Shooter vs. Circular Path Shooter?
 

In our tests in the shop we have found that linear shooters are not as accurate as circular shooters and don't shoot as far. I hypothesise that it is because the wheel doesn't get to work on the disk as much (W=FxD) and will therefore put less energy into the disk before it is released.

Here are videos of our attempts:
http://telly.com/01F3LB
they should all be on there.

Re: Linear Path Shooter vs. Circular Path Shooter?
 

Theoretically there is no difference. For a given contact length, CoF, compression, and surface speed, and a given energy supply (including any storage of rotational energy via flywheel effect) the shape of the pathway is irrelevant.

Theoretically.

Re: Linear Path Shooter vs. Circular Path Shooter?
 

You are not limited to one wheel with a linear shooter design. Watch the videos posted here.

Re: Linear Path Shooter vs. Circular Path Shooter?
 

I am not saying that a belt is the best way, rather just pointing out that it is a method that would work or maybe I should say, should work.

A multi ribbed flat belt will run at 3600 rpm with no problem at all on a 4 inch diameter wheel which translate to a very fast linear speed.