[DonRotolo]

My best advice is to try it. Adding a "spring" (even of elastic) can help - I am thinking of using the rotart piston to "pull" the elastic tight, then the force of the piston AND the elastic is used to whack the kicker.

As a first year team, you really need to build a Pneumatics Board. Mount the compressor, gauges, regulators and all the safety pieces onto a piece of wood. Use a circuit breaker (20A) in the power supply. That way, you have a ready source of air to experiment with until you nail down your design.

One more alternative to consider is using the piston to stretch the elastics (use the latex surgical tubing that came in the kit). The elastic then provides the "oomph" - very fast and very repeatable. (A piston force will vary with air pressure. That's a mighty small compressor there...)