Quote:
Originally Posted by Jared341
And the higher the exit point of the shooter, the greater the area of the field over which that angle could score.
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I want to say the angle was 28 to 31 degrees if you were shooting from very close to the upper size limit which we were. I think it was 28 if you ignored wind resistance, and then more like 31 after experimental testing and wind resistance was added in. (Trajectory physics is really neat to see applied).
This is a really good design exercise where shooting from a high point made it difficult to block, larger sweet spot for fixed angle, and several other positives.
Often though this made for a higher CG which was a big negative for going up that very steep ramp come bonus time. As this thread was looking for lessons, doing some sort of comparative analysis (Weight objective Table, House of Quality, Pro/Con table...) on the Low vs. High shooter would be very good. Team 67 form 2006 would be a good example of trying to find the unicorn solution. They had a neat design that in theory would have had an extremely low CG with a very high shooter, it just didn't work out that way in practice.
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Another important element from 2006 was how to handle a large group of balls. Many teams tried the large hopper with a feeder hole that resulted in ball jams. Trying to make a jam-proof system is much more difficult than it would initially seem. Many teams skipped the jamming problem al together and kept the balls serialized in a column. This allowed them to deliver balls extremely fast and accurrately.