Re: Prototype Small Wheeled Shooter
 

It's a hunch, based on engineering intuition; there are too many hard-to-quantify variables to do any accurate calculations. Looking for some experimental corroboration or refutation.

Re: Prototype Small Wheeled Shooter
 

We're testing a 3-wheel variant tomorrow. Top speeds will be 4300, 6300, and 14000. That's 3:1 BAG, 3:1 FP, and 1:1 BAG. I know the FP is illegal, but it's equivalent to the BB 550 while I'm waiting for some 550s to arrive. I'm planning on trying it without the slowest wheel as well to see what differences we get. It's not your 30% slower, but it's a little closer.

Re: Prototype Small Wheeled Shooter
 

We are testing our linear shooter today.
We are using one CIM and one mini-CIM, each with a stacked pair PAIR of inline skate wheels - 76mm OD & 75A durometer.
These have dramatically better grip than all the other wheels we evaluated so far.
The disk are captured in the V formed between the two stacked wheels per motor as they spins through.

We have a piece of 80/20 20mm slotted framing opposite the wheels, and we cover the side with adhesive backed, high density urethane foam sheet material.
The friction factor is significant, as we found out with our 180 degree arc 8" wheel, direct mounted to CIM tests.
With the small wheel shooter, we are starting out with lower RPM (surface feet per minute) to avoid melting the softer urethane skate wheels, and we expect that the more optimized friction will make up for lower surface speeds of the smaller wheels.

As we confirm what our 1st stage alone can do, we will initially add the mini-CIM second stage for an extra 1000RPM. If that does not give sufficient exit velocity we will install the BAG 14K RPM motor as the 2nd stage.

We expect that much less compression (~1/4") will be needed with the more resilient and grippy materials contacting the disks. We also expect the groove in the slotted framing will help center the disk as it rolls along the length of the channel. If the slot in the frame is too narrow to keep the disk centered, we will machine a 3/4" radius convex curve into the side rail and it will then be covered with the dense urethane foam sheet.

With the V grip of the wheel pair on one side and the concave face of the rail along the other side, we will be able to keep the disk traveling through the shooter maintaining an air gap below the disk, and only the edge of disks touching the shooter as they accelerate through.

Hopefully nothing will be needed to hold the disk down from above either.

Video soon.

-Dick Ledford

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Re: Prototype Small Wheeled Shooter
 

Would love to see the results of this, we are going to do three as well, but if there is no significant difference then we will want to save weight. Thanks!

Re: Prototype Small Wheeled Shooter
 

I'm working on getting some more quantitative results, but our preliminary results are, well, extremely promising.

Stats on our shooter prototype:
Baseplate is 1/4" lexan, unbraced. Shooter is a little bendy as a result. 2-7/8" orange wheels on 3.5" centers. Wall gap is 10.625". Theoretical top speeds are 4300, 6300, and 14000 at 12V. We're using the bright orange urethane flat belt as our sticky wall material.

For this particular testing setup, we're firing at a 19.5 deg angle, shooter was 41" off the ground and 25' from the goal. With three motors, we were nailing our cardboard just above the top of the 2 pt goal. With two motors it was landing about a 6" below the 2 pt goal.

This was testing an integrated solution with a 5 gallon bucket hopper right next to the firing wheels, so we were dragging the frisbee out from under some others. When we were hand feeding a frisbee in, it was throwing them over the top of our cheesy cardboard 2 pt goal and they were still rising. I'd say it would be about 18" above the 3 pt goal.

Re: Prototype Small Wheeled Shooter
 

Do you have Video? This info is great! We found that with a 10 3/8 gap it shoots farther, but we did not have non slip surface on angle. Will try adding that tomorrow. Here is our two wheel vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=Jc8g9WMoQ2o

Re: Prototype Small Wheeled Shooter
 

Would you mind sharing your shooting angle? We're currently set up at 45 degrees, but I'm starting to think that perhaps it's a little overkill.

- Sunny G.

Re: Prototype Small Wheeled Shooter
 

We haven't measured any angles yet, we just have the prototype that we just change the angles until we make it. On the actual shooter we will test and then measure the angle so we can put it in code.....If we get a chance today to test the proto then we will measure the angle.

Re: Prototype Small Wheeled Shooter
 

I want to give you and your team big props. We're using a similar design for our shooter and this has been a wonderful help!

Good luck at your regionals!

Re: Prototype Small Wheeled Shooter
 

We got our prototype shooter running Sat night and hit 5 out of 6 3 pointers in following configuration;

20 ft
Shooter at 25 deg
Two RS550s on 1:1 versaplanetaries
2 7/8" blue banebot wheels
10.5 in compression with top plate
Stationary rail was a painted 2x4
The discs were still rising as they passed through the goals.

Couple of interesting observations;
On our first setup the plates the gearboxes were mounted to would flex. Made quite an improvement to hard mount the gearboxes.
The top plate made a noticable increase in performance when we reduced the compression distance to 10.5"
Tried some 3 7/8" wheels and there didn't seem to be a noticeable difference in performance.

Re: Prototype Small Wheeled Shooter
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuX7e...ature=youtu.be

Three wheels, 1/4" apart, 10/3/8" compression, no non slip angle
Ratios of gear boxes go 5 to 1, 4 to 1, 1 to 1 order of motors is Bag, am, bag

We are getting flexing in the base, will improve in final design

Tried non slip surface on angle not much difference, Orange flat rubber, wheel tread, tape ect....

The farthest we can shoot is 27 feet

Re: Prototype Small Wheeled Shooter
 

How is that 27 feet being measured. With just our two wheel shooter we were getting 30+ feet with the shooter mounted 2 feet off the ground and shooting parallel to the floor.

Re: Prototype Small Wheeled Shooter
 

Sure would be interesting to see a bird's eye view high-speed video in slo mo of the frisbee passing thru that third stage.

Re: Prototype Small Wheeled Shooter
 

will get that on Sunday

Re: Prototype Small Wheeled Shooter
 

Ok now we did 5, 3, 1 ratio

Shooting farther! Still have flex in base, will get more when we stop this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGp3M...ature=youtu.be