1346 Trackball Launcher

[d.courtney]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

We are using four 1.5" x 8" cylinders, with about 2" of preload, backed by a couple of clippard tanks at 60psi downstream of the valve. The launcher starts out just slightly "over centre", so it locks itself in position until triggered... on the final version by a small cylinder, here by a medium to large sized human.

Four 1.5" x 8" cylinders! We only have two 1.5" x 8" cylinders with two tanks downstream, and we are tight for air consumption (it takes 10-15 sec to refill the system)! Anyways it is interesting to see all the designs like this popping up. We took a week to start working on this one, realizing quickly that a robot with an arm would have very little chance of winning if there are many robot with catapults that don't need to stop moving to hurdle (not to mention the armed robots more likely to topple over). Our design is mounted a foot off the ground, and will launch the ball about 3-4 inches over the ends of the rack, and is about 18inches over at the apex. So we will be tweaking our system hoping for the results you have been seeing... just with less air required. Again impressive results, and I hope it works out for you