Shooting Motors and wheels

[Munchskull]

Originally Posted by Ekcrbe

*Actually, I'll add a fifth, but it's not as much about geometry and it's important this year, so I'll keep it separate: motor power. Shooters this year should have a pretty high throughput, so be prepared to use your newfound closed-loop control knowledge that you got from the fine folks here to keep your shooter at its proper speed as you're shooting. With that in mind, consider whether one motor will have enough power to keep the wheels spinning at their proper speed as balls go through. If not, you can add another motor to increase your available power and help your speed rebound between shots.

I would like to add to this great explanation.

Every time you shoot a ball you impart a portion of the shooters energy into your shoot robbing the shooter of the speed. At the same time motors are trying to "charge" the shooter back up with energy.

Unfortunately the motor(s) have a limit to how much energy they are able to put into the mechanism. This is correlated to the moment of inertia of the sum of you spinning parts and the free speed of the motors.

This equation is (1/2)Iw^2 or half the moment of inertia times angular velocity squared.

Your motors angular velocity is limited by its free speed RPM so the only way to add more energy is to increase the moment of inertia. For the sake of simplicity if we assume a solid relatively uniform mass in the form of a drum shooter then moment of inertia would be:

I=(1/2)m*r^2

For all wheel shapes this equation remains almost the same with the coefficient in front of the mass being the only change.

Using this knowledge increasing the mass and moving the mass farther out increases our energy storage meaning the that the energy imparted onto the ball has less effects on the overall speed allowing more consistent shots.

This concept is called flywheels and is a form of mechanical battery.

Sent from a sleep deprived highschooler at 11:42pm on there phone. Please go easy on me for typos and the sort.