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Unread 06-02-2008, 17:51
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dtengineering dtengineering is offline
Teaching Teachers to Teach Tech
AKA: Jason Brett
no team (British Columbia FRC teams)
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Re: How does your robot hurdle?

I'm not sure just what the difference between a 'catapult' and a 'shooter' is meant to be, but we are shooting the ball with a catapult-like mechanism powered by pneumatics.

We have managed to land the ball on the rack a few times during testing, although now that we have increased our shooter's power it would actually be quite a challenge to get the extra four points you get for putting it up on the overpass. We are more than willing to sacrifice four points (12 for leaving it on the rack - 8 for just shooting it over) for the speed and overall efficiency (fun!) of shooting.

As for knocking it off at the start of the match... a 2"x24" cylinder at 20 psi will only use as much air as a 2"x8" cylinder at 60 (about 5-10 seconds of compressor time). You can also set the cylinder up to be single-acting (note that this is different from using a single-acting cylinder, which is a no-no), so you don't need to waste air pushing the rod back down. It is still a lot of air, but not so much that we won't be able to recharge in time to shoot.

We figure that if the compressor recharge rate (approx one shot every 20 seconds) is the limiting factor to our ability to score points that we're probably having a fairly successful match.

That's the theory, anyways....

Jason