pic: Team 48 - Lock n' Load

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

Wow, that's surprisingly little force for such a great launch. We're hitting 220 pounds at full pullback in our shooter, and we're still not getting much distance as we want.

We're pretty happy with the efficiency. I cannot imagine it is the only reason, but our rack and pinion cocking system completely disengages the cocking pinion from the rack on the plunger rod - the pinion has missing teeth by design - so there is no drag on the plunger rod from a winch when it fires forward.

The igus linear bearings and aluminum shaft are also (literally) quite slick.

Any reason for the tiny little pusher plate? Or are you going to replace this with something else?

Honestly, the shape/size was kinda arbitrary - we just wanted something larger than the diameter of the 1" plunger rod to start. The end of the rod is threaded so we can put in larger-diameter endcaps if we want and examine the effect on distance (and more likely, shot consistency).