[Bongle]

Originally Posted by Ragnarokae

Is that measurement, or were you able to calculate that? If it was calculation, I would really like to know how for future reference.

Posted this in a couple other threads today.

given a trackball center at (0,0)
given a trackball contact point with a rail at (16,y) (the rails are 32" apart)
given the trackball is 20" and assuming it remains approximately spherical, then...

x^2 + y^2 = r^2
16^2 + y^2 = 400
y^2 = 400 - 256
y = 12

So the contact point for the rails will be 12" below the center of the ball. This means that between the rails, the bottom of the ball should be 8" below them, and thus 2" below the maximum allowed height of a robot in the opponent zone. However, this is in an ideal world where the rails are infinitely thin and the ball is perfectly sperical. Since the rails are 1.5" wide and the ball will deform some, the ball may be slightly higher than where I computed it to be, and the contact space for a robot will be very, very small.

Glad to hear someone did the actual measurement and it was close

Here's a diagram:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/at...4&d=1199558995