HIGH torque shooter

[Rick TYler]

More power.

1. Assume you are one of those amazingly well-equipped teams that can machine their own gearboxes.

2. Design gearboxes that use three CIMs per side.

3. Shifted one way, two small CIMs are geared down to run at the same speed as a large CIM. The output is run via a timing belt up to a single 8-inch shooting wheel (top launcher design for maximum backspin) running at roughly 2500 rpm. The speed is controlled by a feedback sensor.

4. The wheel is therefore driven by six CIMs.

5. Each transmission can be shifted into "Drive" where the motors are geared down appropriately to drive the 6WD chassis and disconnected from the shooting wheel.

Since the 'bot will not shoot on the move (really difficult anyway), the drive train can be used for either shooting OR moving.

What problem does this solve: the shooting wheel's recovery time drops as close to zero as possible. Weight is kept very low. Strong drivetrain.

Will anyone build a 'bot that uses the drive motors to power the shooting device? I'll bet I'm not the only one that thought of this.

[DjAlamose]

I really don't know why you would need six motors to run a shooter... There are other ways of getting enough power to shoot the balls. I can tell you right now we aren’t using a motor, springs, pneumatics, or even electronics at all to shoot the ball. Plus were using 3' wheels on our shooter, there is no need for 8inch wheels at all. When the 21st comes along ill share our secrets, but not now. Plus we can still shoot 10 balls in around 5-6 seconds.

Plus the timing belt that was used to get the power up there would more than likely get stripped after about 3 shifts, unless they were from a stand still. Plus being able to shoot on the fly really helps.

[Gdeaver]

I believe said mech. would violate the KISS principle.

[Joe Ross]

60 and 254 powered their winch off the drive train in 2004.

[JVN]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

I believe said mech. would violate the KISS principle.

Which weighs less:

• 2 Super-CIM motors for a shooter
• 1 pneumatic cylinder, and required motion transfer components to shift the drivetrain to a shooter.

Could be a light-weight solution, for those who do not want to move while shooting.

-JV

[artdutra04]

190 also had a similar drivetrain for their 2002 robot. They had a CVT transmission that would drive the robot, but it could also be shifted to pull two of the mobile goals up to their robot. This idea is possible, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a team who actually did something similar to this, even if they only used 4 small CIMs.

[John Gutmann]

Originally Posted by DjAlamose

...Plus were using 3' wheels on our shooter...

Your using 3 foot wheel!?

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by DjAlamose

Plus we're using 3' wheels on our shooter

I'm impressed. Where do you store the balls before shooting, in a side-by-side hopper? Let's see, 3-foot diameter times Pi, hmm, 9.42 feet, or 2.87 meters. Unless you are using a two wheel design (the mind reels), you would only need to run that wheel at 500 RPM to shoot the ball at 12 m/sec. Let's see, a FP runs nearly that fast at the next-to-the-last gear in the gearcase, so are you just hanging a modified FP on each side of the wheel?

Whatever happens, I want to see a pic of that robot posted here on CD, OK?

[DjAlamose]

OPS! I sooooooo meant to say 3" not 3'. Sorry, wow I don’t even know how you could do that. You would have to be very careful in planning that...

We aren't using motors to power the shooter! or pneumatics, or springs! Technically speaking were not even using gravity. The only problem for us is even small amounts of friction are bad so we had to beef up a few things....

[Schneidie]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

More power.

1. Assume you are one of those amazingly well-equipped teams that can machine their own gearboxes.

2. Design gearboxes that use three CIMs per side.

3. Shifted one way, two small CIMs are geared down to run at the same speed as a large CIM. The output is run via a timing belt up to a single 8-inch shooting wheel (top launcher design for maximum backspin) running at roughly 2500 rpm. The speed is controlled by a feedback sensor.

4. The wheel is therefore driven by six CIMs.

5. Each transmission can be shifted into "Drive" where the motors are geared down appropriately to drive the 6WD chassis and disconnected from the shooting wheel.

Since the 'bot will not shoot on the move (really difficult anyway), the drive train can be used for either shooting OR moving.

What problem does this solve: the shooting wheel's recovery time drops as close to zero as possible. Weight is kept very low. Strong drivetrain.

Will anyone build a 'bot that uses the drive motors to power the shooting device? I'll bet I'm not the only one that thought of this.

We are usung 2 small CIm's and are having no problems with our shooter, and we are using Andy Mark gearboxes, so there is no combination.