[BBray_T1296]

Our team (1296) and our other school district team (3310) got together for the 3rd year in a row to our parallel design meeting. We decided to go with a wheel-ed shooter instead of an air cannon/puncher/catapult alternative, though all 4 methods were brought up in the meeting. We made this decision because we thought it would be the easiest to produce, easiest to control distance, and quick to fire.
After that, we decided we wanted to have our turret pivot 360 degrees so we could shoot from all robot orientations. This was suggested by 3310 as they had already chosen a tank drivetrain and we had selected mechanum again. This infulenced our decision to not have a variable-angle hood due to complexity with wiring and weight. We opted out of the 360 degrees rotation and settled on 120 degrees because of the agility of the mechanum.
We did some prototyping of our shooter ideas with 4X4 and 2X4 wood (excellent for making strong prototypes) and some spare motors we had. We tested 3 models, one with 2 wheels on top and bottom, one with 2 wheels on left and right, and one with one wheel on the bottom with a curved hood. We ultimately decided upon the latter of the three designs. After several configurations and designs we finally had a CAD of our current shooter.
To get the speeds right, we spent several hours on our practice field testing distance-from-goal:speed-of shooter ratios until we formulated an algorithm to calculate the necissary speed automatically.
We originally had 2 Fisher price (the part # eludes me) motors and 2 gearboxless andymark motors working in tandum to power the shooter. (They were mounted on opposite sides of the wheel with different gearings so they each produced the same output speed into the wheel even though they have different Max RPMs) After the Bayou Regional, we did some further testing of the shooter and determined the andymark motors were actually Impeding the fisherprice's speed.

So thats how we got what we got