Kicker Help?
 

We've designed a mechanism using the bungee cords that can produce 75lbs of force at the end of our kicker. But we fail to move the ball over one bump. Is 75 lbs enough force? Or is it possible that there is something fundamentally wrong with our kicker design. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Re: Kicker Help?
 

Our robot and some other teams are using a combination of bungee chords and pneumatic pistons. If you use that and try your best to kick the ball at about 45 degrees you'd be able to clear about twenty feet uniformly. I've also heard of taking the pneumatic pistons and limiting how far the piston can pull back and that actually gives more room for pressure storage, giving the piston some more bang for you buck.
Does that help?

Re: Kicker Help?
 

We've been prototyping the same concept, but for some reason can't get more then 10 feet out of a shot. Could you offer us any more insight or advice?

Re: Kicker Help?
 

75 pounds is A LOT. We'd have roughly 30-40 (50 pounds at our strongest) and we can get a decent 30-25 feet. It really also depends on how far away your point of rotation is sitting, generally farther is better.

If you don't mind, post a picture/video of your setup, and that'd be better for us to help out.

Also, are you manually releasing it or is there a mechanism involved? Depending on what you're doing, you could have a mechanism that's burning too much energy in the release.

Try messing with the angle of incidence and size of kicker and see what you get. I would recommend messing around with wood prototypes because they are much easier to change/modify than metal/80-20.

Re: Kicker Help?
 

We have come up with a design using surgical tubing included in the kit that is able to get the ball over the hump easily when a wedge is added to the end of the kicker. In one of our tests, we fired it after school down an empty hall way to see how far it would go, and it hit the ceiling almost knocking down a tile. It seams that noone has mensioned puting a wedge at the end of their kicker, and I think that is why you are not getting the lift to get over the hump. you have plenty of power, but you need lift to fly over the hump, or topspin to roll over it

Re: Kicker Help?
 

I would bet it has to do with where you are striking the ball.
We found the best sucess by striking the ball 2.5-3" off the ground.

Re: Kicker Help?
 

Our team has designed several that work well with surgical tubing. I'm not sure the force we use, but it isn't much. We are, however, able to launch a ball quite some distance. You might be wasting lots of energy in your release. Also, the way that the kicker connects with the ball is important. We used a wedge to hit the ball causing it to go in more of a diagonal arc.

Re: Kicker Help?
 

Well my team hasn't completed our kicker design yet. but here's a link to a team that we work with that has utterly beautiful performance on their kicker. Pause and study the vid a bit.

Video

if you can't access youtube because of blocks or whatever just click on my signature and you'll go to my teams blog. I've posted the video of that kicker up.

It's not my teams robot though. It's a high school that were working with closely.

Re: Kicker Help?
 

How much Travel do you have, in what ever hit the ball?
What is the mass of whatever is hitting the ball?
What is your config?

A picture would really help...

Re: Kicker Help?
 

Could you guys please explain what you mean by a wedge? Just what kind of shape, what angle its at, etc.

Re: Kicker Help?
 

Some basic things to consider are:
1) Maximize impact velocity on the ball.
2) Make sure the kicker follows through on the kick.
3) The mass of the kicker is not as important as the velocity, but it helps.

Ke = (M/2)*(V*V)
Kinetic Energy = (mass/2) * velocity squared

Maximizing kicker velocity will also help compress the ball. The ball will return that energy in the form of velocity, and distance, if it is still in contact with the kicker when decompressing, thus the need for follow through. Having more mass will enhance this process as it will the kicker to not decelerate as much when the kicker impacts the ball.

Re: Kicker Help?
 

Second Bill's suggestions. Once you have enough mass that the kicker isn't stopping upon impact with the ball, velocity is the primary driver of kicking distance. He didn't mention it, but mass is inversely proportional to kicking speed. More mass = less speed = less kicking distance. I'd recommend lightening your kicker until you start seeing diminishing returns in kicking distance.

Re: Kicker Help?
 

The first thing I would look at changing would be what is hitting the ball. We are still optimizing this, but 30-50 degrees (from vertical) is the range we have determined to be the best so far for the angled plate we have attached to our leg. Also some people aren't thinking realistically about how hard or far you need to hit the ball. Remember your never going to be 18ft away from the bump because in the far zones there is only 17.5ft from wall to bump and 17ft in the middle, plus your robots dimensions will take up some of that space, so plan that the max, if your right up against the wall would be around 15 to 14ft, depending on your robot's dimensions. Also your not going to be right up against the wall so make sure you try seeing if you can just change the distance your firing from.

Re: Kicker Help?
 

Kinetic Energy = (1/2)m(v*v)

Re: Kicker Help?
 

OOOoooops, you are absolutely correct. I have edited my post to reflect this.
Man, it has been a long while since I had that physics class. :o
Thank goodness physics doesn't change just because you forget the formula.