As an off-season project my team is working on a foam ball shooter and we are now looking at making a conveyor similar to what a lot of other teams have made for ball games in the past. We have plenty of good ideas for how to design something like this, but not much experiences with the parts that comprise one.
The top questions I have are
- What are some common grippy belts that are used, and where can I buy them? Polycord? Like this?
- What about this flat stuff Miss Daisy used?
- Knowing names, durometers, and sources will help.
- How do people keep belts from wandering on the roller?
- Miss Daisy's machine has small black wraps of (electrical tape??) on the roller. Does this work by emulating a Crowned Pulley?
- What are the spacers in between the cords seen on 254's robot and so many others? A name or link would be great.
Any additional tips or tricks that other teams have picked up over the years would be great. We are building a shooter in order to get experience with something we haven't tried before, so any experiences or lessons learned from you all would be great to have.
While [a college FIRST competition] would be pretty fun, I think that you'll see this build season that mentoring is a heck of a lot of fun too. (except when the kids pretend to cut their fingers off to see your reaction) - Beth Sweet [more] 
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