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pic: Team Fusion's T-Shirt Shooting Robot
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I love it! Did you buy it or make it? if you bought it i would love to know where? Either way its an amazing idea! :D
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Very cool idea Team Fusion. Did you guys ever use it? How well does it work? |
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I accidentally uploaded the picture on my dad's name. Oh well ..
The t-shirt cannon has been great for getting Fusion's name out in the community. It is a simple way to get people asking us about our program. It is sad when some nights the crowd at the football games are cheering more for a shirt than for our team. I think we spent less than $50 on the whole setup. Right now I'm interested in replacing the PVC storage tank on the back of the robot. I think the most pressure we have shot a shirt at is about 80 or 90 psi, and from what I know the PVC should hold up to about 200-250, but I don't want to take any chances. What do you recommend? **edit** The bot is actually our 2004 competition bot. I'll look around to see if we still have the plans. |
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what a great project for the school. I love it, and i'm sure everyone at football games do too.
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Awesome to see a t-shirt cannon set up like that! 45 has had a few but they got dropped and cracked so the are out of commisson. The word on the street is that at the Kokomo ball drop some crazy kids will shoot out some confetti into the crowds...darn kids :ahh:
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What are you using as the valve? SCH40 PVC is good up to it's pressure rating, which should be printed on the tubes, and I think it's far past 250 psi. The PVC joints are always built stronger than the pvc piping, so as long as you cured/glued the joints correctly, all will be fine.
I always like to put my psi limit depending on the valve, I usually use a normal sprinkler valve, which is good to 120 psi; so I set mine to 100-110 psi and it can shoot stuff far enough for my purposes. If you're using a ball valve, you could go higher, but at that point I'd be scared, lol. I suppose you could make some type of scatter shield for it. If you're having problems shooting the t-shirt high up into the stands, try cramming the shirt down the barrel, hard. You don't want any air bleeding past the t-shirt. |
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I always thought it would be cool to shoot hot dogs into the crowd, or shoot the opening pitch of the season's first baseball game, or shoot beads at a local Mardi Gras parade,or .. ahh the endless possibilities.
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So simple yet.. It's just so cool. We need to build one! :)
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The valve is a RainBird in-line irrigation valve. It's only $16 at Lowe's. |
Re: pic: Team Fusion's T-Shirt Shooting Robot
Actually, the best time we've had with the shooter was at one of the football games last year. One of our local radio stations was shooting shirts into the stands and started saying that they could put one higher into the stands than we could. Now, just so you understand, we keep the pressure around 45 - 50 psi as a safety precaution. You don't want to whack someone in the head too hard if they aren't looking! I was sitting on the front row of the bleachers and Brandon (bhweezer here on CD) looked over at me and smiled. Then he reached down and cranked the pressure up to about 80 psi. The t-shirt went from the ground, up over about 40 rows of seats, and into the parking lot. The radio guys just walked away in silence.
Just a little background for those interested, this project began on the bus ride home from the 2004 Championships. I asked Team Fusion's "Big Kahuna" Mr Fava what we were supposed to do now that the season was over. (It was my first year and I didn't know any better. I'm sorry!) He said he had always wanted to be able to shoot t-shirts as a 'Get to know Team Fusion' kind of thing. The rest, as they say, is history. The shooter is completely remote controlled. We have one if the indicators on the Operator Interface come on to let us know that the tank is full and ready to shoot. Our next little addition is to add a revolving light so people will look our way before we shoot. When we hit the trigger to fire, the light will come on and then a 3-5 second delay before it actually shoots. It also does a great job shooting croquet balls. You can spend a great afternoon entertaining little kids by lauching the balls 150' across a clear field and having the kids go chase them! |
Re: pic: Team Fusion's T-Shirt Shooting Robot
Looks good, now all you need is an automatic reload.
A t-shirt magazine or revolver! ;) |
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An automatic reloader or something like revolver style would be totally awesome. Then you wouldn't have to be there to do it. Also, you could get a siren to go with that revolving light. :)
Also, do you have a video of this thing in action? I find it hard to believe that a shirt can go that far on that little pressure (but then again I have never built one). Maybe it is just a massive volume of air and a fast valve that does the trick? |
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If you wanted to add more shots the easiest thing to do would be to add more barrels. That would allow you to shoot more than one shirt at a time. But I will agree that a mag feed shirt shooter would be cool, and would add to the challenge. Some issues would be feeding problems due to irregularities in shirt folding and making the breech air tight to prevent a loss in range.
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I suppose this would definatly be an attention getter and spread the team a little. Jow did you go about getting permission to do it? or did no one really care? Just curious.
_Mike |
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All we really did was demonstrate it for our principal a couple of times and then no one had a problem with it. |
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Did you use the stock KOP air compressor? If not what did you use?
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Everything on the robot was from our 2004 competition bot. We used the KOP compressor and left all of the pneumatic parts on the robot. The only significant change we made was we let the electrical team rewire the robot before last years build season.
The only down side to using the KOP compressor is that it takes a couple of minutes to build the pressure up. If we take our time reloading shirts then it isn't a problem. |
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Now I'm trying to picture what would happen to a T-shirt shooter with the T-shirts wrapped in cling wrap, especially if they did stick inside. |
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Well obviously not saran itself (although actually i would work since i believe it sticks though static which means it wouldn't really stick under pressure) but a thin plastic wrap will make the shots much better.
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We did try using Soft Drink bottles cut in half and the t-shirts rolled up and stuffed inside. They fit perfectly, but tended to flip over and go 'heavy end first' into the crowd. Now we put two or three rubber bands around the shirt and let 'em fly!
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Allan |
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We used a non-flow regulated in-line 1" valve from Rain Bird. I had the same question about the 24vac coil and 12vdc supplying it. All I have to say is, it works great. We are using a spike to trigger it. |
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We have videos of our cannon at a football game and a pep rally. I am going to post them after we get through with this hurricane.
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Does anyone have plans for this sort of thing? How do you release that pressure?
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Wow, we should make one of those for the football games... it could replace our QB :p
JT 229 |
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Where did you guys buy your pvc tank?
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Uh I don't think you buy PVC tanks you can make them quite easily though. Where are the videos!!! Ive been waiting! :confused:
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See a pattern developing? This is a classic case of DIY t-shirt launcher. By the way, thanks again for the inspiration Team Fusion!!! After writing this response, I realized that 364 is from Gulfport, Ms. Are you guys alright down there?? Did your school and robotics stuff survive? Is there anything we can do to help you out? |
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No, I meant the pressure vessel. I'm not sure I'd want to build my own tank, but I'm sure it can be done. -----------EDIT----------------------------------------- My bad, I didn't thoroughly read your post. Thanks for the info! I guess I listened too intently to the "do not build air tanks out of pvc or you'll die" thread! :p |
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We used the pressure valve from the 2004 KOP.
Sorry for not having any video of this yet. Katrina hit and things are still pretty crazy down here. The high school starts back tomorrow so I will head over there after class and try to get you guys some video of it. In all honesty I have no clue if this robot is still around. I think it went underwater during some of the flooding here. |
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Hey, like has been said, I'm sure that shooting t-shirts is least on your mind right now. And about the whole underwater part, um, be careful please when you turn it on, if you do. Electrical fire=bad! :ahh: Good luck to you guys down there, everyone is behind you. |
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I think I can speak for almost every user on CD when I say our thoughts and prayors are with you all down there! Andrew, I think I missed something, you replied to my description with Quote:
Oh wait, I just had a brain flash. Try this explanation. We continually recharge our pressure vessel, or pressure tank, with the on board compressor from the 2005 KOP. |
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Yep, I got it, after I reread your post(read twice, post once....I know). My brain apparently stopped part way through, then picked up again on the how to make the barrel. Sorry about that, if you read my edit on the post I think it'll be pretty hunky-dory.
By the way, we are currently building our own t-shirst shooter!Yayyy!! :D And heres an idea we came up with: Our school uses really cheap, lightweight garbage bags in the small cans, and if the shirt(or other projectile of choice) is placed in the bag first, it slides much nicer in the pvc, as well as acting as a kind of sabot on launch. As far as the bags go, think of one of the plastic produce bags that are on the rolls and that you put your fruit in at the grocery store. |
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When pressing the shirt down the barrel during loading, you might feel a large static field/charge building up. If you can feel it, it's already beyond the point that it could cause damage to static sensitive devices such as the FET's in you Victors. So to reduce or dissipate this charge, add a grounding strap , cable or chain to the bot to ground it. We added a short length of chain to the bottom of the frame. It drags on the ground and makes a huge difference. |
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wow, would have never thought of that problem... How exactly do you ground pvc though? I thought it only developed static on one side(blame television if I'm wrong), which would be the inside. Anyways, we will definitely do this. We have learned the hard way about not listening to suggestions............ :D
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PVC naturally generates quite a bit of static (I HATE having to brush all the dirt and junk that collects on them) and might not be the best choice. Unfortunately right now I can't think of a better material. Does anyone know exactly why PVC generates so much static? Ive worked with other plastics and I have never seen a more efficient hair collector.
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One problem with the grounding, we will almost exclusively be using this on a polyurethane sealed wooden gym floor, or on a rubber track. We don't want to ground the entire frame to the battery, so how many shots do we get before we will start having problems? Or is there something like a static magnet? Or could we maybe just isolate the pvc from the frame?
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You dont have to ground to a floor. Any mass of metal will do. Even people will work! :D
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So what you mean is, excuse my ignorance of all things electric, that even if i'm (and the bot) am on an insulated mat, wearing heavily insulated gloves; if i whack it with a piece of aluminum, I'm all set?
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errr not really. The electricity will flow to a ground but it must be of suitable mass. A bar probably would not be enough. Actually you know if you want it might be easy to use an anti static guard and ground to a person. Uhh I never support or recomend hitting anything with a metal bar. :rolleyes:
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Jeez, how do you guys keeps the newbies in line?(J/K!) :D |
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We just finished our air cannon, and it works relatively well! Heres some video of it after some short time tuning it.
CRT T-shirt Cannon |
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We have been using ours at home games and let me say, it has really caught the attention of our school, sponsors and community. Suddenly people are aware of the Robotics team that never really knew anything about us. We are receiving requests to launch a several different team events in the coming months. We had a request from a local dance studio to launch during a performance of "The Nut Cracker" (Long story for another time). The local News Paper is going to be interviewing us for an article. A new sponsor (Schwann Food's) wants us to launch their shirts wrapped around gift certificates at the next two games. All I can say is, we never thought so much attention would come from something so fun!!!! By the way, I noticed this on your video too, doesn't it make a really cool sound when it fires, a real head turner! You can hear that sound from 80 yards away over the din of the crowd at a fully packed football game!!! |
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It really does turn some heads! It really is a loud kind of pow!, and the thing even recoils a bit. Right now we're working on fixing the arm so that it can aim, because being so old, the gearbox has kind of fallen aprt and needs an overhaul. I would also like to add another compressor to it so it'll charge more easily. It's been so long in the making. We threw together the tank and barrel in about four days, then sat for three weeks waiting for the Lowes valve! Our store recently discontinued their stock, and the main distributor was out of stock oddly. Anyways, we're fine tuning the range now, and we can currently get like 40-50 yards. The t-shirt projectile itself is the object of attention right now.
Something else I though was really cool that I'm sure your's does too: when you fire that sucker, water condensation wisps out of the barrel like gunsmoke. Pretty flippin awesome! P.S.- I'm the idiot on the hill! :D |
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We really haven't seen a need for a second compressor, by the time we get it re-loaded, the chamber is up to pressure. As for the POW!!, I always thought it sounded more like someone getting punched right in the diaphragm. The sound of air rapidly escaping the lungs is fairly close to what you are hearing. We definitely see the condensing air at the end of the barrel as well, it's really cool! Do your selves a favor and chart your distances based on elevation and pressure. My guess is you will find out that it is surprisingly consistent. At 60psi, you should get a maximum distance on a rolled, rubber banded t-shirt, launched at 45 deg. elevation of................175 ft. BTW, I just ordered a pressure regulator that will allow us to regulate up to 100psi. (I see 230 ft. + coming :D ) |
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Haha, it must be something with mentors, ours is having more fun than we are I think! We send the shirts at about 80- 100 psi, no regulator. We're just watching the gauge right now, but intend to use a pressure sensor in a bit.
What we've found, although it's still in it's infant stages, is that you begin to drop off with distance increasing after about 80 psi. You get about 3-5 yards further with that extra 20 psi, but thats it. Might be the weight of the shirt. But boy is it accurate. We can consistently put it into about a 3 yard circle at 30 yards. Its pretty fun to see is load the thing though: we use a shovel handle and ram the thing down in for a nice tight seal. It looks like you're seriously loading a cannon. The place where we fire it is on an access road behind our school that gets quite a bit of traffic, teacher and otherwise. We get some awful strange looks in the morning! I am considering the ballistics table once we get the thing consistent. |
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Repeating Crossbows All that really needs to be done is modify the crossbow/launcher thing so that the lever is prolly pneumatically operated. ![]() |
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wow, I've never seen that before. Pretty impressive(reminds me of Perfect Dark :D ) Unfortunately, we're dealing with pressure, so we've got to have the seal. Perhaps if you took mechanicalbrain's bolt idea, and simply used a spring magazine, you'd be able to pull something similar off. :)
Edit------------------ If you meant using the actual crossbow to launch the t-shirt, that would definitely work. Seems like an indirect way to throw em though. ( pressurize the same volume of air to compress the bow, instead of just using that air to throw it. Besides, it makes a loud boom! :D |
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That's correct. The pneumatic piston is connected to the lever instead of it being hand-operated.
Here's a reasonably detailed explanation of how this works. There is only one real problem with this repeating crossbow, the drawstring wears faster because of the effort of being pushed up and down. One possible solution to this is if there is some sort of replaceable protection for the drawstring (duct tape, plastic, alum foil, etc.) And, I'm not sure of you've ever heard one of these in action but if you purposely set the slot on the side of the mazagine so the string always hits the stop. It should make a sufficient enough sound, though I'll admit we all know how cool the "thump" of a pneumatic cannon can be. :p |
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As some may have seen in another thread... We are redesigning our T-Shirt Shooting Robot. We should be finished soon and we'll have pictures and video of it later.
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Thanks, Pavan. |
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I will certainly try... I just got SolidWorks, and this will be my first time using it, but I will try to draw it up on there.
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Tuesday we will be working on the robot at my house. We still need to assemble the electronics and pneumatics as well as pimp it out with lights and such. Here is the latest picture of it that I took with my phone:
![]() I will have more photos tomorrow if everything goes as planned... |
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Here is a bit more updated picture, although it's in the back of the car...
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Here are the pictures for today. The first picture is of our battery selector switch. It operates at around 50PSI and the switch can handle about 250 AMSs continuous and 360 AMPs momentarily. The switch is designed for boats with two batteries and runs around $30. The second picture shows a little more of the work I did today plus the back of the battery switch. You can start to see the electronics coming together. I hope to have this thing running by tomorrow. We are going to add neon lights next week and I have the wiring already prepared for that. After I get it all wired, I'm going to clean up the chassis and sand off the stickers left from the the old shooter. We will be running about 120PSI in the large orange tank. I tested the tank and it works very well. We've only tested it at 40PSI so far, and it shot a T-Shirt about 20 feet and then hit a wall pretty hard.
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Sorry, no pictures today... but I do have a video of it. At the time taken, the tank was only pressurized to 80PSI. This tank has the capacity to hold up to 300PSI, but we can only put in 120PSI. The less pressure, the safer :D
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q_sKhM14Ajg |
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we have been making t-shirt cannons for a couple of years now and have always wanted to do something like this. Just curious as to what you used for the tubing, and what kind of valve did you use? thanks.
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http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/29050 |
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What did you use for the hose from the tank to the barrel
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I'm not really sure what we used for the tubing. To tell you the truth, this tubing is over 4 years old, and was purchased before I was even on the team. It's pretty hard. If I had to guess, it's probably some type of water line that is used in boats, possible a sewage line for boats (don't worry, it was never used for the sewage though... :D )
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Apparently Facebook's links changed and all my pictures disappeared from the thread.
http://photos-h.ak.facebook.com/phot...022615_482.jpg http://photos-f.ak.facebook.com/phot...022677_602.jpg http://photos-h.ak.facebook.com/phot...22679_4392.jpg http://photos-a.ak.facebook.com/phot...22680_4784.jpg http://photos-161.ll.facebook.com/ph...24164_7472.jpg http://photos-161.ll.facebook.com/ph...24165_7774.jpg http://photos-161.ll.facebook.com/ph...24166_8045.jpg http://photos-161.ll.facebook.com/ph...24167_8305.jpg http://photos-161.ll.facebook.com/ph...24168_8570.jpg http://photos-161.ll.facebook.com/ph...24169_8829.jpg http://photos-161.ll.facebook.com/ph...24170_9089.jpg http://photos-161.ll.facebook.com/ph...24171_9346.jpg http://photos-161.ll.facebook.com/ph...24172_9604.jpg http://photos-161.ll.facebook.com/ph...24173_9859.jpg http://photos-h.ak.facebook.com/phot...25527_8534.jpg http://photos-a.ak.facebook.com/phot...25528_8838.jpg http://photos-c.ak.facebook.com/phot...25530_9518.jpg http://photos-e.ak.facebook.com/phot...025532_476.jpg Hopefully no one minds the links. It's better than having 3 pages worth of pictures load on someone's computer. EDIT: I also just noticed all the pictures reappeared... Gah! Whatever facebook... |
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What did you guys use for the tank? Is it a propane tank?
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can you message me on how you got the sylnode like how to wire it and what we need for the programing I think I will need to wire it to a spike but i am not sure we have a air hose comming out of the top of the valv that will release the air ( long story long night don't ask )
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