Quote:
Originally Posted by Ninja_Bait
What point in the motor curve would you go for; max efficiency or max power? Or somewhere in between?
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What everyone else said. You design to your design requirements. In this case, you're probably wanting your reload time to be as small as possible, or small enough that you're back to speed before the next ball arrives, so you're looking for something closer to the peak power point.
Practically speaking, you want to be operating somewhat faster than peak power. Firing slows down your motor, so if you're normally operating at peak power, then you're dropping to a lower power point when you fire.
The absolutely ideal operating point is going to depend on the total effective inertia of your system and how much energy you lose per shot. That will also determine how much speed you lose per shot. The less speed you lose per shot, the closer you'll be to your operating point, the closer you want that point to be to peak power.
So, obviously, having the mechanical capacitor effect of a high inertia shooter helps here as well. The reflected inertia of your motor through its gearbox adds to the overall inertia of the shooter, of course, and you'd be reducing that reflected inertia to take advantage of this...
There's obviously a lot of variables here to optimize. I've sufficiently complicated the issue for it to grab my interest, so I'll try my hand at creating a spreadsheet or script tonight that can optimize things based on some given variables. At the very least, it'll give me a better handle on the interplay of the different variables. I just hope I can get some rotor inertia values for at least a few of the motors....