Fuel Shooting Census
 

Hey all,

Now that the build season is well underway I am curious how fuel shooting is going for everyone.

Are you maniacally laughing as fuel rains into the high goal?
Are you the slow and steady type?
Are you taking the shotgun approach?
Are you cursing every third fuel that thinks its too good to go in the goal?
Are you giving fuel the silent treatment because gears are where it's at?

A poll is above, however, other interesting fuel questions I couldn't fit.
Where are you shooting fuel from?
How much fuel do you plan to hold?

Please feel free to post anything from thoughts to specs to pics to bench grinders.

Cheers, Bryan

Re: Fuel Shooting Census
 

I've had the DoubleMint gum jingle stuck in my head for the past two weeks.

Double your pleasure,
Double your fun!
Double your fuel rate,
with two turret guns

Re: Fuel Shooting Census
 

Posted this on the other thread. We plan to increase the speed and retain the accuracy, then double it with two barrels.
Edit: Theoretically. At least that is the plan.

Re: Fuel Shooting Census
 

If you think about from a match play perspective, optimizing your shooter past 6-8 balls per second is not the most optimal use of your build time. We're looking at approximately 1.5-3 seconds of gain in cycle time. Even if you manage to up that rate by 2 more balls per second more, which is very difficult to do, you are looking at 1 second of gain per cycle (maybe 5 seconds if you spend the whole match shooting, or more likely, 2-3 seconds for you to get around 140 fuel).

If you have hit this point, it is highly recommended that you focus optimizing other parts of your system. I feel that teams often times focus too much on the shooter itself rather than the process of shooting fuel.

The biggest limiting factor for most robots is on your ability to put fuel in the goal is going to be the intake/collection and line up. A combination of solid drivers training, automation/improvement of aiming process using vision is going to be more important than firing at 12 balls per second.

Re: Fuel Shooting Census
 

I just want all of the balls out of my robot as fast as possible so I can get back to picking up gears. If half of them end up in the high goal that's great. If most of them end up in the hopper of a better shooting robot, even better.

Re: Fuel Shooting Census
 

Getting a shooter to put balls in the boiler at high efficiency is only part of the problem. Aiming and getting the ball into the robot with out jams are also big problems. One jammed ball and it's gears or defense.

Re: Fuel Shooting Census
 

The fuel arms race has everything to do with fuel feeding. Actually shooting fuel is not the difficult part.

Re: Fuel Shooting Census
 

I'll agree the feed is important, but a properly designed feeder should not have an issue of feeding 6 to one or 12 to two shooters. You aren't going to be able to outshoot your feeder.

Re: Fuel Shooting Census
 

The shot angle is also very important. Balls will hit each other at the vertex of the shot parabola if the angle is steep (close to vertical) whereas if the shot is lower and more horizontal, the vertex is less pronounced and thus you can shoot at a faster rate.

Re: Fuel Shooting Census
 

Anyone want to solve a differential involving the rate of shooting and the rate of scoring?

It's an interesting problem when you consider defense. One perfect bump can cause your robot to miss 40+ fuel if shooting at 20+/s. Contrariwise, slow shooting allows more time for defenders to disrupt your flow.

Every year, an element of the game surprises me. In 2017, I would be surprised if there were more than a handful of robots shooting >20 fuel/s at >90% accuracy. Looking forward to being proven wrong.

Re: Fuel Shooting Census
 

How the heck are teams managing 20+ balls a second at 90% accuracy - that's literally a ball every 5 milliseconds? What kind of sponsor just gives a high school robotics team a minigun?

Re: Fuel Shooting Census
 

Multiple shooter heads or shooters greater than 1 ball wide.

Re: Fuel Shooting Census
 

Unbridled optimism is alive and well in FRC :)

Re: Fuel Shooting Census
 

Week 1 hasn't happened yet, so optimism reigns. :D

Re: Fuel Shooting Census
 

Welcome to a Chief Delphi poll where the responses are made up and the numbers don't matter.