Wheel shooter gearing

[JesseK]

We're using a single 8" wheel, offset flywheel with adjustable weights, and 2 BB550's through 4:1 transmissions and linked via chain. We're going to play with the belt cogs a bit, but right now they're something like a 16:36 reduction coming off the transmissions for about 2,000 RPM final speed.

It shoots very consistently from the key without the need for a spin-up time. We're working on range, range control while driving, and other minor tweaks though. We may also have to redo our shooter guide for less compression since the IFI 8" wheel has a very grippy tread. I suspect that's why we're falling short of our max theoretical range.

To control it (I think) we'll have an encoder with camera ranging and a lookup table for range:speed lookups. I'm not on the programming side, so that's just a guess.

Hope that gives you an idea of what to try. Good luck!