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Unread 07-11-2015, 00:15
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FRC #2177 (The Robettes)
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Re: Alternating Compressors

Quote:
Originally Posted by mschwab013 View Post
This is mostly just intended as an off-season project to get more students interested. It won't be seeing heavy use so we wanted to build it using only parts we already had. Thanks for the suggestion though! We might look into making it more heavy duty in the future.
As a fun exercise for your students, have them do some calculations - how much air per shot is required, what is the anticipated shooting rate, and thus the required airflow to achieve that rate. Then have them do some research to see if there are better options out there, like one of the season-legal continuous duty compressors, or even a larger compressor that wouldn't be legal during the season. For an anticipated operating period, how much battery would be used, and is that a problem? If it is, how much air storage would you need to generate on a different battery before starting the event in order to keep the battery during the event functional?

There's a lot of room in these types of projects to dive into some of the math involved... Something that teams may do during the season with their robot, or they may just wing it, using their experience to get something "close enough" without bothering with all the math. But now's the time to teach them how to analyze the problem from multiple angles to find the best solution
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