Re: How do the Shooters work?
 

thank you...your comments are appreciated.
i always used to laugh last year because i was in the pits during the matches and the robot would unfold and crash to the ground with a BANG. And i could always hear it and know when we were on the field:D

Re: How do the Shooters work?
 

I'll give a little more detail without being too redundant to what pizzey already described.

We use the FP motor in a Dewalt transmission going into the AndyMark transmission. This winches back spectra cable (400lb breaking strength) at the top of the paddle (so it is only about 100lbs of force applied at most) To launch we hit the dog out of gear (shift into neutral) For this we use the van door motor on a cam attached to a string pot (couldn't package a rotational pot and didn't have time for a redesign because this was done 2 days before ship).

The surgical tubing in the un-cocked position basically has very little force being applied, but in our fully cocked position there is about 400lb of force (don't stick your face in there) The tubing runs to a joint perpendicular to the paddle that actually hits the ball, so as the top is winched backwards the tubing is stretched about half a foot. This is slightly different than most teams that use surgical tubing because we only stretch it a very small amount, but need more. Most of what I've seen consists of 4 quite small bands with about 4 ft of stretch (such as 71, 118, 326, and I know there are other these are just the ones that come to mind right now).

Feel free to come to the pits in Atlanta, we're always glad to answer questions. And I believe our transmissions are more infamous for noise than our launcher, but maybe not the ramp...that was quite scary at first.:eek: