Re: Gathering mechanism????
 

I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that it had a drum that spun really, really fast. Then, when the drum touched the ball it was shot up into the hopper.

Re: Gathering mechanism????
 

Other designs considered:

• Lure the balls into the hopper using tiny plastic carrots

• Scare them in by making a scary face and having an audio speaker quietly whisper BOO! in their ears

• Lure them in with the promise of a "fun orbit ball party" complete with sweet rave music and glowing sweat

• Use the Aperture Science portal gun

Re: Gathering mechanism????
 

The words "95's ball gobbling" link to the movie of the bot and "device" links to a picture of the instrument used (rollers).

Re: Gathering mechanism????
 

Today we made an excellent belt/roller gathering prototype as well as a huge paddle

I'm leaning towards a belt/roller system to get the balls off the ground and into our ball "hopper" to get shot

Re: Gathering mechanism????
 

Last night we experimented with conveyor belts a bit. We'll probably use one of two ways to do it, with adjustments made later:

1.) Surgical tubing
2.) Rubber mesh used in VEX, in conjuntion with solid rubber hose that will be sewn to it, laying flat against the mesh but perpendicular to the way the ball moves. The layout is similar to a rock/gravel conveyor, but everything's allowed to flex in order to form to the ball for better grip.

One thing we haven't nailed down yet -- has anyone figured out an effective compression on the balls so that there's minimal slip yet it doesn't deform the ball too much? We're thinking about spacing our conveyors 8" apart so the ball exerts some force back on the belts for traction, and then the ball will sort of 'pop' out at the top...but we have yet to test that.

Re: Gathering mechanism????
 

Yup. Belts and rollers, driven by pulleys (supplied by New Hampshire Industries, aka NHpulleys.com, our host for several years).

That mechanism has served team 95 very, very well. Variants of it were used on our 1998 (Grace), 2002 (Feynman), 2004 (Da Vinci)[*], and 2006 (Lilly)[*] robots. 2004 and 2006 could disgorge as well as gobble balls. 2002 was definitely the coolest one (since the balls were lined up), but Da Vinci was probably the best overall mechanism (it reliably and quickly could suck up balls and disgorge them without jamming, and we regularly did well during matches by simply depriving the other side from having balls).

[*] Palmetto regional Silver winners... :)

Re: Gathering mechanism????
 

We were alliance partners at Palmetto in 2006. My son, who was 9 at the time still talks about that shooter!

Re: Gathering mechanism????
 

Put a stick inside the ball, inflate a balloon on the end of the stick, take it where you want, then deflate the balloon.

Joey

Re: Gathering mechanism????
 

The Skunkworks is planning on using the power of stench to herd the balls into the airlock... Hmm, perhaps we can use this to the same affect against opposing drivers... But, if we can't stink it up enough, we'll resort to gerbil powered super rollers!

Re: Gathering mechanism????
 

yes... you out one end inside the hopper and aim the other one on the floor below the orbit balls! But what happens if you drive into the floor portal...:eek: