pic: B.o.B. - Stronghold - 2

[Chris Hapstack]

Wayne - Thanks! I'm excited to see y'all there too!

As for the intake, I'm pretty happy with how it centers the ball. It's by no means perfect, but after a few weeks of prototyping various ideas, this yielded the best result. The main issues we were trying to alleviate with the helix was pulling the ball towards the center when it was trapped in front of the bumper. It's definitely faster when we drive straight into a ball, but if the ball does start off-center, the helix will center it in a second or two. One of the reasons we decided to go wide was a larger intake area, which definitely paid off at Lakeview.

As for the helix itself, we just cut a spiral into a 6" DIA circular sheet of plastic, then stretched it out into the helix shape. It's attached to the roller tube with some small custom right-angle brackets made from sheet metal.

As for the rivets, let's just say that we're addicted...