[TedG]

Originally Posted by T^2

I don't know what your team's situation is at the moment, but given your 2013 record (I checked The Blue Alliance) and the way you phrased your question, your team is in no to be creating a shooter.

I regret that I didn't discover this thread until today, else I would have tried to dissuade you a week earlier and saved you a week of wasted time. The other respondents to this thread have given excellent advice on creating a solid shooter, but that advice is the result of thousands of hours of cumulative experience and practice. Obviously, each individual shooter will be unique, and will need its own tuning. Your team does not have the time or experience to be able to make a consistent shooter by Saturday; the fact that you are posting today to say that you don't have a functional shooter yet only confirms my suspicions.

Your team should abandon all work on the shooter and focus on what is actually important for your robot: drivetrain and driver practice. It has been said for years, for very good reason, that a good driver on a terrible robot will consistently outperform a poor driver on a world-class robot. If you focus on training your driver, on a properly working drivetrain, for the next few days, your team has a chance of making a positive impact on your elimination alliance. If, on the other hand, you continue to work on your shooter, you will fail at both shooting and driving.

Of course, it's possible that your team cares more about creating a shooter as an engineering exercise than for competitive reasons. Even so, I, as a student in my third year of FRC, personally believe that engineering a good drivetrain is easily the most important part of creating a robot, and is by no means simple or easy.

I'm sorry if I punctured your bubble of happiness. If I could have done it sooner, I would have. In all honesty, I'm surprised no one else brought this up sooner.

How do you know they don't have a practice robot they are working with already? Maybe it was mentioned they don't and I missed it, or you just know they don't. I agree that it is sometimes wise to abandon part of the project to save the baby. Worth asking before you burst bubbles IMO.