Cushioning Your Hard Stop

[DampRobot]

We have 6 1/8" thick rubber washers dampening our shooter as it hits the forward stop. The shooter plate still audibly rings when it stops going forward.

We've also seen the need to be really conservative with material strength in shooters, in addition to adding dampers. We originally had some 1/4" and 1/8" plate in some places that we wouldn't think would see much static load, and essentially no shock load. After seeing rather frightening deformations (15 degree or so bends in 1/8" 6061 and noticeable bowing in 3/8" 6061) we decided to beef everything up from 1/8" to 1/4" and 3/8" to 3/4". As of yet, we haven't seem any significant deformation as a result of strain, but were still not very far into the season...