[Jeffy]

During autonmous, many teams have been successful without a ball magnet. After that, the only time I have seen it work with any success was for a zone 1 plow bot that can plow the balls along the wall and into the goal.

I would highly reccomend that if you have a kicker, you have a ball magnet to go along with it.

The simplest way to make a ball magenet is to have a roller towards the top of the ball and a wall 3" inside of your robots frame.

From what I have learned working for a week on the prototype and going through a competetion with it is that the roller type ball magnet has very small tolerances. To compensate for this, our team uses two foam wheels that deform and make up for some of this, and you can change the wheels or file them down accordingly. Also, you can add a slick substance such as electrical tape to your wall to change that distance.

Ours uses a fischer price in a 25:1 gearbox and 2.75" foam wheels. I would suggest that you try and gear it a little lower, or a little higher. Our gear ratio works, but only because of a clutch that saves it from stalling on the ramps and such.

edit: listen to the guy below me, one of the most impressive ball possesion mechanisms at KC.