Feeding into shooter
 

My team is using a stacking idea for our hopper, but we have yet to come up with a way to feed the frisbees into the shooter. We don't know how we can push a frisbee into the shooter with out the other frisbee getting caught on top of the device that would feed the frisbee into the shooter. So how are your teams feeding into your shooter? Thanks for any help.

Re: Feeding into shooter
 

We're using an arm made of metal attached to a window motor to push our frisbees out of the hopper into the shooter.

Since the arm is made of one piece of metal, it's smooth and thin enough so that it doesn't get caught on the frisbees stacked on top. Assuming you have the height of the arm at the right level, and the arm is smooth, then you shouldn't have any issues with frisbees getting caught.

Another option is using a piston (if you're comfortable with pneumatics), and attaching a small plate to the end of the piston. This has more of a chance of getting caught though, on the retracting stroke of the piston (under the edge of the frisbee right above it).

Re: Feeding into shooter
 

We use a 5 gallon bucket with a slot on one side just big enough for a frisbee to fit through and then a pneumatic piston mounted under the shooter to push the frisbees through.

Re: Feeding into shooter
 

Our Shooter has two servos. One on the front(wheel side) that lifts the stack other than the bottom one and the second pushes the bottom Frisbee into the wheel.

Re: Feeding into shooter
 

What is to prevent the frisbee from landing on top of the pneumatic?

Re: Feeding into shooter
 

That sounds much like the Team 4322 system. The reveal video has a nice closeup of the piston mechanism in action. It has worked flawlessly so far.

Re: Feeding into shooter
 

We are using what sounds like a similar system. For us, the Frisbee right above the one being pushed does fall on top of the piston's pushing part, but a ramp on the return side of the pusher allows the piston to return without interference from the frisbee.

Re: Feeding into shooter
 

Do you have a picture?

Re: Feeding into shooter
 

We took a minibot gear and drilled out a hole offset from the center. Then we attached the pg71 gearmotor to it in that hole and it pushes frisbees in quickly and consistently, no pneumatics necessary.

Re: Feeding into shooter
 

Team 67 did something similar to this. They attached paddles on a chain and powered it to push the frisbees into the shooter at a constant interval.

As for 308 we used a pneumatic cylinder.