[billbo911]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

We finished the final version of our shooter today and noticed a problem we had not observed in our prototypes: As our CAM running on a VEX 393 comes around the back to push them out, it seems like the discs were bound together and stuck on the front wall of our hopper. We investigated and it appears that as we threw them in at a 30 degree angle to mimic the feeder station, the discs were stacking at weird angles and getting caught up in eachother.

I remember earlier this season seeing a team use little plastic spurs to separate discs and nullify this problem. However, right now I can't seem to pinpoint the thread. I'd be much obliged if someone could point me in the right direction.

What are some ways you guys have found to keep the discs from getting misaligned and binding together?

We refer to this as a "nesting" problem. Maybe that's because we always seem to have "bird" theme, we are EagleForce after all.

What we use as an "anti-nesting" device is simply a screw that we adjust to allow one disk to fall in place, ready to shoot, but will not allow a second disk to drop until the first has been cleared out. It's basically a geometry issue.