Are any teams planning on shooting the ball?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Chaos in a Can

We discovered that one of the large CIMs is more than capable of launching a trackball.

We also discovered that it's more than capable of lifting a small filing cabinet filled with barbell weights into the air...

You mean the minibike motors from last year? The ones that had the odd-shaped front plate and the belting tensioner and the impossible-to-remove pulley?
If so, you should also discover that they are not legal this year, as they are not in the kit.

If you mean the ones from the kit this year (no odd front plate), then you are fine.

[Chaos in a Can]

Its one of the ones from this year's kit.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Chaos in a Can

Its one of the ones from this year's kit.

OK, whew. I thought (by the reference to "large CIM") that you had used an illegal motor. Typically, the ones this year are just "CIMs" or "small CIMs". "Large CIM" refers to the biggest motor in the kit last year and the year before, which is no longer in the KOP.

[SteveGPage]

FRC836 Robobees ... shoots and scores!

[IndySam]

Originally Posted by SoJ

We seriously are serious about launching the trackball. We've got our prototype working wonderfully, and we've designed how it's going to work out. All we need to do is fabricate it (of course we'd need to do the robot first) and attatch. Of course, then we still have to hope it works out the same. We're confident.

It would be wrong for the "bomb" squad not to launch a ball.

[s_forbes]

I just got word from the NERDS in the fab shop, and it sounds like they have achieved success as well! I think they'll be posting a video soon...

[cgredalertcc]

We are capturing the ball using a vacuum lifting the ball so that our arm is slightly below the rack and firing the ball over using two back to back 3/4 inch bore by 10 inch stroke cylinders we've had success with shorter stroke but we want to be sure we get it over so we opted for the longest ones. The funny thing is the 3/4's extend way faster than the 1&1/2's and the ball really doesn't require that kind of force so we get a pretty good shot out of it.

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by cgredalertcc

The funny thing is the 3/4's extend way faster than the 1&1/2's

Not surprising at all, the 3/4" bore cylinders hold a lot less volume of air, so they fill much more quickly

[7-11number1]

Team 1711 will be hurdling the ball but instead of hurdling it from off the ground we will be grabing the ball and use an arm to lift it about 6 feet high then throw. That way we can continue driving under the over pass without waiting to lower the arm. Pics and video of our robot will soon be posted

[Éowyn]

Originally Posted by SteveGPage

FRC836 Robobees ... shoots and scores!

Holy cats!!

Nice job!

[Qbranch]

1024 is perfecting the design for our linear pneumatic launcher. So far, our launcher (which currently resides on a 2x4 wooden frame) can put the ball, repeatably, on the overpass, but not launch it over. So, after when tune the launcher up some more and put it on it's mount (which is about 3' off the ground higher than it is now) it should work fine. It's flight path apexes three feet ahead of the robot.

FYI I used a little calculus to figure out a way to calculate trajectories. If you know how far down range and how far up you want the apex of the ball will be, my equations will tell you how fast and at what angle you have to shoot the ball. If you all are interested, I'll post a scan of my piece of notebook paper.

-q

[cgredalertcc]

Originally Posted by squirrel

Not surprising at all, the 3/4" bore cylinders hold a lot less volume of air, so they fill much more quickly

What I meant to say was that the result of using the 3/4" cylinders is a faster velocity on the ball after firing. We did some testing using a complete vertical shot on the ball and two 3/4" cylinders made the ball travel higher than two 1&1/2" of the same stroke. Any ideas on increasing the output of the shot. We already made a huge difference by placing storage after the regulator, but before the solenoid. Any advice would be appreciated. We have recognized some friction issues with our linear guide and we are considering switching to one of the micro series linear guides from NSK, because of the benefits of the bearings over the low friction plastic sliders with what we use now. Also we are stiffening the track that the guides ride on, because at current they are only fixed at one position. Adding a second attachment point should reduce some of the binding we see with the single attachment point. Right now we are unreliably shooting over the rack if we aren't lined up perfectly on the rails that are spaced wider. At the 14" points the ball bounces cleanly over.

Thanks, Charlie

[JesseK]

We're lifting instead of launching. I feel like we'll be the odd bot out because of this thread, but whatever. The key to our bot is the ability to capture and irradically bouncing ball while being knocked around and then lift and/or place it over/on the overpass.

I will laugh at the match where there are 6 launcher/racer bots on the field and no one has a way to knock a ball off. It will be tragic, but you know it'll happen and it'll be ironic when it does.

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by JesseK

I will laugh at the match where there are 6 launcher/racer bots on the field and no one has a way to knock a ball off. It will be tragic, but you know it'll happen and it'll be ironic when it does.

We're planning on using our ball knocker-offer (which was our first design concept) to hold the ball down on our catapult before launching.....yup, you definitely need a way to get the ball down if you're planning on shooting it!

[JonathanLKS]

We're also planning on shooting the ball. I'd post a video but they are all trapped inside our cell phones right now.