Quote:
Originally Posted by waffle_dynasty
Team 5010 is working hard on building a t-shirt launching robot this off-season!
We've built a prototype bot out of wood already, and hope to have a cool finished robot by the start of basketball season.
Here's some information about our t-shirt bot:
-8" pneumatic wheel drivetrain
-SCUBA tank and secondary "per-launch" air chamber
-Shots at 80-100psi
-6 barrel revolver
-All-thread angle adjuster
-Nearly autonomous operation
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If you're planning to use it during basketball season, either you're using too small of a solenoid valve or you're going to have shirts hitting the roof of any normal-sized gym. We launched a t-shirt over the top of our football stadium last night with less than 60psi in the secondary tank, using a 3/4" diameter solenoid valve.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nuclearnerd
A scuba tank or carbon dioxide cylinder would work better of course. Where do you go to refill yours? How much does it cost? How many shots do you get from a full tank?
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We got our scuba tank at a local dive shop and get it refilled there, as well. The stock scuba regulator cuts the pressure down to where an FRC-standard regulator can take it to our working pressure. I understand that firehouses also typically have scuba-charging facilities; for a time we could get our tank filled for free, though it was possibly because our first head coach's brother-in-law is a fireman.
How much you get depends largely on how well you ration the air. With our arduino code, which measures the solenoid open time (40-50ms IIRC), we can do several hundred launches. We lost an xBee recently, so we cannot use that code. With our current hack set up,* the time is based on how long the driver holds the button down, we managed to get through the homecoming pep rally and most of the game (at least 100, probably about 150 shots).
* The hack set up uses a roboRIO loaded with our unmodified 2016 competition code. The intake/low goal roller controller drives the two solenoid valves. That one is forward and the other reverse is effected by diodes soldered into the wiring harness.