Quote:
Originally Posted by =Martin=Taylor=
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.
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Lovely spot for an encoder on the toughbox nanos...
We dropped the kicker down without powering the motor until we reached our desired position and recorded the encoder value. The logic behind a kick works like this; If the kicker is not pressing the limit switch (at the top of the kickers path or resting position) then it's continuously powered backwards until it hits the switch. This is so it doesn't fall down during driving around and give us half kicks. Pressing the limit switch resets the encoder count. Only variable for each kick is the speed of the kick..which allows us to change the distance, obviously. We had to end the kick a little early to stop it from pummeling into the hard stop we made (just a steel bar bolted across the inside of our frame, to protect our vaccum). After the ball is kicked, the motor is reversed slowly for a short period of time and then fully retracted back to the top with a faster speed.