Design Process: 2012 Shooters

[JVN]

Originally posted here:
http://blog.iamjvn.com/2012/07/rebou...r-process.html

As most people know, I was not involved in FIRST this year. I went to FRC Championship in St Louis, and to IRI.

One of the things that interested me most about this season was the wide variety of robot shooter systems. This seemed to be one of the more difficult design challenges of the year, as most teams were unable to produce shooters capable of high accuracy and high precision shots. I was surprised by how hard it seemed to be to repeatably hit 3-point shots from the key.

I know there were a number of factors that caused this to be a difficult design challenge; one requiring significant tuning to ensure performance.

I was inspired by this thread:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh....php?p=1167847

I'm curious not just where teams ended up, but their journey there.

Which brings us to my question:
What details can you provide about the design process for your shooter subsystem?

I am hoping that some teams out there will have documented their process a bit and can provide in-depth answers...

• What iterations did you go through?
• What features did you tune in during the evolution of your design?
• Which system variables were most important to performance?
• What did you prototype? How detailed were your prototypes?
• What did you start with? Why -- what inspired this baseline?

The process that goes into the engineering of these robots is as interesting to me as the robots themselves (or maybe more so).

Obviously I'm interested more in the successful systems, but welcome any responses.
So let's hear it!