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Originally Posted by Chris is me
How did you stop this kicker when it reached the edge of your robot? How did you stop the motor from stalling when it reached this point? I'm working on something similar for IRI (hopefully) and other off seasons, and we were wondering what you used to stop the motor from trying to spin when the kicker reached the end of its trajectory, and whether or not you needed some foam in your frame to prevent your high velocity kicker from ruining it.
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There are neoprene rubber blocks to stop it. The motor is used to accelerate the mass to full speed; we stop giving it power before it contacts the frame, so the motor is under no stress.
This is a great concept, but our implementation was not perfect.
The main mistake we made was making it so powerful. We discovered in competition that smacking balls with full power was not an effective way to score, since the balls would always bounce into the air instead of rolling into the goal. As a result, we only swung the hammer at a fraction of its full power, which mean't it took a while to swing and kick the ball.
I would suggest using a much smaller hammer (12" would prolly do it) with a lower gear ratio. This is similar to what 78 did. This will give you a more compact mechanism, as well as improving the performance.
PM me. I love answering questions
