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Unread 05-02-2012, 15:21
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FRC #2900 (The Mighty Penguins)
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Re: Gear ratios for launcher

Quote:
Originally Posted by artdutra04 View Post
How much compression were you putting on the ball?

Other than the fact that the tread pattern on the 2012 KOP wheels chews up the foam basketballs, any single-wheeled shooter with six inch wheels (when directly driven from a CIM) should easily be able to shoot the balls a more than adequate distance.

Simply changing the gear ratio won't solve this problem; the real problem is probably related to ball compression, shooter hood design, and/or misalignment/binding/friction in the moving parts of the shooter.


FYI: The 2.7:1 gear ratio is what is inside the CIMulator from Banebots. There will likely be a fair amount of teams using this gearbox this year, as this gearbox makes a 775 or 500-series motor "emulate" the output characteristics of a CIM motor. This allows teams without a lot of machining resources to keep their CIM motors in their drive train and use "emulated" CIM motors elsewhere on their robot.
Our mentor said the we should have as little amount of contact with the ball as possible to pervent too much deformation and loss of accuracy. So you're right, that definitely could be the problem. But just out of curiosity, would it be worth more to have a high gear ratio or a larger wheel diameter?