Quote:
Originally Posted by lemiant
Hey guys,
Today we were prototyping a shooter, and it turned out to be a little more powerful than expected  . At ~80 feet I'm fairly sure this is the farthest anyone has ever launched this year's game piece:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6L1LLRHEFM
The contraption uses two kit wheels powered by a CIM geared UP at a ratio of 22:15. This set up is mirrored on the top and bottom (using a total of 4 wheels and 2 CIMs). The shooter takes ~1.5s to recover between balls. Back of napkin math suggests that the maximum surface velocity of the wheels is 200ft/s.
Hope you enjoyed that,
EDIT: When I say kit wheels, I mean 2011 kit.
- Alex |
Last night we had our prototype launch the first shot a measured 100ft across the parking lot. After that it averaged a little less than 80, but was very inconsistent, probably because it was 10 degrees out and the basketballs were noticeably different in the cold. And the way we fed the ball into the launcher was inconsistent.
Our prototype was just a wood mock-up at a 45 angle with two cims directly attached to a single wheel(several years ago gray rubber wheels) aligned so they touch the largest circumference of the basketball, and spaced with a gap of about 4 inches for the ball to compress through. However, it did leave large black streaks across the ball, so...
It was definitely not what we were expecting, and not necessarily our goal to accomplish, but it was pretty darn neat.
For our actual design, we won't use cims, for a good reason as there is an extensive range of other motors, and we plan on using all 4 cims for drive train. And going toward a pitching machine like design, it will take some experimenting with compression to achieve a design that wont leave giant black marks during the match and actually fit in a reasonable range for the field. But overall, I think we know what path we're going down this season!