Loading from a 4 frisbee bucket

[ddg258]

I was trying to find a way to load frisbees into our shooter using a pulling pneumatic piston rather than pushing. When the piston pulls a frisbee the next frisbee falls into position before the piston has a chance to return. We also have a linear loader that does work but takes longer to load and shoot. The design of our robot doesn't allow us to mount a pushing piston. Any suggestions?

[Suitster]

Well, there's three ways to go about it, do you;

delay the next frisbee falling into place
move the frisbee out of the way
move the acuator out of the way

Our team went with the first option, by making the part of the actuator that interacts with the frisbees have a "tail" that kept the frisbee from falling into place until the actuator was back in place.

[tim-tim]

Try adding something to the backside of the piston. Like a thin (.032") piece of lexan, a set weak spring steel springs, string, rubberbands etc. You just need something that the piston pulls behind itself to prevent the next disc from falling prior to the piston returning to the extended (ready to fire) state.

Hope this helps!

[jwfoss]

Another option is to make the "trigger" a wedge shape, this will allow it to grab the disc in one direction and when it returns to the stack it will lift the front edge of the next disc up to re-engage.

[HumblePie]

Our design uses a toggle bolt "wing" attached to a guided cylinder to pull the bottom frisbee out. Toggle bolts are available at any home center, and include a torsion spring. In our case, we also riveted a small piece of lexan to the toggle to increase the reach through the shooter deck (YMMV).

The default position of the toggle is out in front of the bucket. When actuated, the cylinder is extended (rearward), and the toggle spring is compressed to allow the toggle to pass under the edge of the frisbee. The cylinder is then actuated in the pull direction, pulling the frisbee into the shooter wheel. As the frisbee passes over, the toggle spring will compress, allowing the frisbee to exit. The trick is to design you hopper so that the second frisbee doesn't have a chance to "shingle" and overlap the bottom frisbee, forcing the bottom frisbee to lift the second frisbee up in order to exit. That's when jams can happen.

Give it a try, it worked well for us.

[ddg258]

Thanks for all the suggestions, we'll give it a shot!

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by ddg258

I was trying to find a way to load frisbees into our shooter using a pulling pneumatic piston rather than pushing. When the piston pulls a frisbee the next frisbee falls into position before the piston has a chance to return. We also have a linear loader that does work but takes longer to load and shoot. The design of our robot doesn't allow us to mount a pushing piston. Any suggestions?

We run the same exact system, we pull the frisbee from underneath. The next frisbee falls down, but our "frisbee puller" is a wedge shape (like this: |\ but a much much shallower angle) so when the pusher returns it slides under the bottom frisbee