[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by Jery

good work ... our motors only got up to around 1800rpms ... were not sure why, but we're moving on to other ideas

This raises a good question. On one of our prototype launchers, we've geared the Bigcim to spin a single wheel at a surface rate of 24 m/sec (twice the 12 m/sec limit). We are trying to get a high-speed camera so that we can directly measure the muzzle velocity of the ball, but so far we haven't been able to. I've been wondering how much velocity will be imparted to the Poof ball by the wheel. The upper limit on this prototype is 12 m/sec, but we haven't found out what the true speed is. Does anyone with better testing gear have any suggestions on how much the typical wheel underperforms theory? (We are using a pair of 8-inch Skyway wheels in the prototype -- low mass.)

Has anyone tried a traffic radar on the ball? Does it register?