Any idea for how many balls the boilers can hold?
 

I've have been going through the CAD and I can't seem to find any of the internals of the boilers. Does anyone know roughly how many balls each goal can hold without overflow? Was this discussed at New Hampshire field?

Re: Any idea for how many balls the boilers can hold?
 

Find the dimensions for the bin that holds the balls after they go through the boiler. That should give you a pretty good idea of how many balls you can insert without overflow.

Re: Any idea for how many balls the boilers can hold?
 

I suggest you check this video.

Re: Any idea for how many balls the boilers can hold?
 

The boiler automatically feeds into loading lanes. The balls are then recycled onto the field

The capacity should be practically infinite.

Re: Any idea for how many balls the boilers can hold?
 

And FIRST helpfully put the ballcount info into the Manual. 50-60/bin, per 3.11.5.

Re: Any idea for how many balls the boilers can hold?
 

What if you score 300 balls in 10 seconds?

Re: Any idea for how many balls the boilers can hold?
 

https://youtu.be/bJQ4kMwOGtI?t=1m50s

No specifics, but helpful.

Re: Any idea for how many balls the boilers can hold?
 

According to the manual you'd have to wait about 60 seconds for it to count the fuel. The Fuel would still be sent to the return and overflow bins at the same rate.

Re: Any idea for how many balls the boilers can hold?
 

The also talk about the goal overflowing. I am betting that the boiler cannot hold 300 balls, so we need to know how much it can hold so we know to not make our hoppers any larger than that (if the internal capacity is smaller than what we can fit on the robots).

Re: Any idea for how many balls the boilers can hold?
 

From purely speculation I'd bet that the goal can handle at least one bins worth (~50-60) of balls in each goal at a time which seems like a reasonable maximum amount of balls for one robot to hold. From the video the return mechanism looks like it can run at a rate of about 10 balls per second. Considering that fuel that has not be counted after tele op will not be scored It seems like it would be a somewhat poor idea to put in more than it can count in a 10 second period. I can't find mention of capacity outside the team videos so it's probably a good question for the Q&A.

Re: Any idea for how many balls the boilers can hold?
 

The manual disagrees with your estimate from the video.

Re: Any idea for how many balls the boilers can hold?
 

5*2=10

Re: Any idea for how many balls the boilers can hold?
 

We tried to do this and came up with some rough numbers.

The Cylinder itself appears to be ~ 1.78 cubic feet, and the funnel is ~ 1.63. Assuming that the trapezoid below the cylinder is used for processing fuel, thats ~ 3.41 cubic feet total.

The large clear bins used in the videos look like they hold approximately 50 balls, and are 4.24 cubic feet.

Using this, the number of balls that could be held in the boiler stack is approximately 40. If you were shooting at a rate of 6 balls per second non-stop, the boiler stack would fill up in 40 seconds. So you need 240 balls going in non-stop.

Obviously the voids in a rectangular container will be different than the voids in a cylindrical container, but it's close enough for me tonight. There are bigger fish to fry, like figuring out how to flood the boiler in the first place.

Re: Any idea for how many balls the boilers can hold?
 

Sorry I assumed you were only scoring in one goal at a time. Scoring in both goals at the same time would be an interesting thing to think about. Not sure whether the decreased time is worth the decreased points (unless it's right at the end of the match) but to each his own

Re: Any idea for how many balls the boilers can hold?
 

Here's a photo of the Boiler innards used to index the Fuel and pit the balls out the back.
Back of the boiler photo is in post 23