Box throwing
 

Just a general question really, whats the furthest any of you teams have been able to throw a box if your design does that, we can get it pretty much across the field but I want to know if there is a way to get it higher across the field.

The only way to throw it very far is to use flywheels, by my calculations anyways.

Greg

Actually our team is using a cannon to launch the boxes across the arena. It's still a little inacurate but were in the process of rifling the barrell.

I still don't get the strategy behind launching boxes.
Does anyone have a strategy you'd like to share?

The reason my team is going for a launcher is that we could steal boxes from our opponents and get them in our scoring zone in a matter of seconds and not have to worry about what"s happening on the ramp. We"re planning on using a catapult with surgical tubing to hold the energy and using motors to tension the tubing. The rest of my team are newbies, and my engineer was skeptical of the stregth of the tubing, so I gave him a bit of a demonstration. Myself and one of my friends held two pieces of surgical tubing tight and another person pushed a crate into them. We launched to box straight up, which broke a cieling tile and bent the metal framework that holds them up.

He will never again question the power of surgical tubing.:D

how much surgical tubing are you using? we were thinking about all of it doubled over a couple times, we can get amazing power out of that now we are just trying to find the perfect angle to power ratio to launch them at



erm well with that we kinda deduced we would hit the human players... LOL gotta change the angle and power some more ;)

By the way i love that pic

luckily we had someone down at the end of the arc to catch it... well have it bounce off of them so they absorb some impact ;) :D

my head hurts now.........

where am I, and how did i get here. the last thingi remember was a glacier colored bin flying at me at a high speed......

my head still hurts....

hey one fell off of a stack and bounced off my head and broke a little piece of when it hit the floor so were both in the head trauma by glacier boxes club :D

we could start a head trauma committe for our team :)

I told you guys we should get helmets, just for testing, but no...

I told you safety glasses wouldn't help against bins...

-Steve

The angle = 45 degrees for max distance.

Greg

Hmmm, two weeks into the build and we"re already having injuries. We were discussing this as a strategy today, but it could also pose a saftey problem.
As it appears there are numerous teams looking at launching crates quite a distance, there is the problem of launching one into the crowd, and with the injuries sustained by people who know a crate is going to come at them, I would hate to see people being surprised by a crate flying at them.

For any projectile, 45º will deliver the most distance for power. If you launch at 45º you can start reducing power for specified distances. If you think you need to change the angle too, do it without changing power. Change one variable at a time to get the most effective results.

yeah thats what ive been figuring im just trying to find an optimum... ya know? :)

Haha...how about just constantly lobbing the crates against the opposing teams players station? :D Scare the hell out of them and knock their radio off every 3 seconds.

Gracious professionalism! Pfft!

When you're in anything but a vacuum, something slightly less than 45 degrees is usually better.

I'm going to be terribly frightened of anyone launching boxes like that.

launching boxes
 

well, as for launching boxes at the players' stations, I speak for myself when I say my team as had enough problems at the players' stations in the past that we don't need boxes flying at us and scaring the hell out of us. :yikes:

hehe, well anyways. I agree with whoever said 45 degree angle for max distance, according to the laws of projectiles or whatever, but if you want height, go with something above 45 (duh)... (wow, it's amazing what you can learn in physics class when you're not sleeping)

yeah but also ya dont want too much height because you'll end up breaking the boxes :\

don't forget if you constantly crack, break or pop the boxes open the refs will make a rule about that for you that would render your design USELESS

I believe the optimal angle is around 37 degrees in our atmosphere for most objects, especially ones like these boxes with a relatively high drag coefficient.

Launching boxes
 

Well, launching boxes was a cool idea for my team at first, but eventually we decided not to. Mostly because our head of drive systems, the guy who will probably be in control of the robot most of the time, can be a complete idiot every once in a while and probably would launch a box at a ref or two on purpose. Granted, this would be extremely funny (provided death and/or permanent injury is not the case) for a little bit, it would also get us DQ'd. Oh yeah, launch boxes into our driver station at your own risk!

LOL that definately would be... hmm... what word am i looking for..... counter-productive... LOL

FLING!
 

for anyone who was at the Pacific Northwest Regional last year and played with us as alliance members you'll remember how we had one of our hamsters (the dancing one that sang Kung Fuu Fighting) sit at the player station with our alliance mates. Forewarning for those chuckleheads out there who think it'd be funny to fling boxes at our player stations: those hamsters can be MIGHTY vicious, specially with those mini-numchucks! MUWAHAHAHA! :D (trust me, I've been hamster-whipped enough times to know these things!)

But as for any more injuries... well, many burnt mouths on scalding hot cup-o-noodles that someone brought in (I might add from my previous post that not only did it take them 15 minutes to get the microwave set up, we all still can't figure out how to use it properly! OY! Instuctions? Who needs instructions?) Anyways, enough of me for now.

Re: FLING!
 

we wanted to mount one of those on our bot this year!!! LOL

Hehe. We bought several of those at a Cracker Barrel in Fort Wayne, IN on the way down to IRI this summer. They're high quality.

We at Team 64 have trained our singing Gila Monster to press the cactus on our control panel (which is our secret box launching button.) We used a cactus as a button because we didn't want anyone accidentally launching a box. We sure hope no one from FIRST witnesses Gila pushing the cactus. After all, it does free up both drivers to try to see over the wall.

Ken Loyd
Team 64:yikes:

just for s**** n giggles
 

Wow, I like that idea! It seems... sinisterly evil... yet ingenious! I LIKE IT! MUWAHAHA! I would also think it'd be good from keeping newbie-chuckle-heads from playing with the button. Anyways.

(in reference to dancing/singing hamsters)

And as for that, we're gonna do that this year, actually. Dancing/Singing hamsters are our mascot, HAMSTER PRIDE! :D We're gonna make a protection cylender out of plexiglass or something to keep it from being harmed by boxes being flung by our dear friends team #84 ;)

I think being in the front of the audience is going to be slightly more dangerous this year. I have a feeling the "Play of the Game" award from at least one regional will go to someone who threw themselves in front of a small child in the audience to save them from a speeding bin.

......Sucessfully blocking one bin from hitting the child, only to have another bin knock the poor kid to the ground seconds later.

cool.
 

wow...
thorwing a box.. hrm?

*raises an eyebrow* what do you mean...?

My team got an amazing....4"!
we gave up on box throwing after that.......

That's rich!
 

Now THAT is rich! I agree. Maybe I'll sit my niece down in the audience and attempt that... maybe put a big bulls-eye on her... (j/k) ;)

Enough of me for now (I think I should just put that in my signature... yeah, I will)