pic: Wheeled shirt launcher

[NWChen]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Have you done any tests with using a wheeled shooter to propel shirts? I'm wondering how much grip you would get, if the wheels would mark up the shirt from slipping, etc.

Team 1058 approached the idea several years ago fairly successfully.

In testing, a very tight roll is not even necessary to eject a properly ranger-rolled shirt. When the forces on the shirt are perpendicular to the direction of the roll, it seems to be difficult to unravel even by hand.

Originally Posted by asid61

I'm not sure how well wheels would interact with the shirts. One would have to make sure that the shirt doesn't get torn up or unroll while shooting.

Originally Posted by bEdhEd

I wonder how tight of a roll the shirt needs to get any meaningful compression from the wheels?

The shirt compresses to about 2/3 of its normal diameter for an effective shot (independently tested with the first shooter stage and second shooter stage, but not together). The wheels do not mark up, although a few cloth fibers sometimes gather after several shots.

To clarify, I've already built this device. There's a bit more wiring to do before it's ready to test in its entirety. Indexing with the ratchet and pawl is functional. The total price of the unit is approximately $350.