Shooter Help for 2nd Year Team

[savagecreature]

Hey everyone,
Team 4186 is reaching out hoping that some of you can help us. Our problem is simply this: We can't get our frisbee launcher to work. We initially built a launcher using a single drive motor and a 9 inch wheel with an enclosed chute. We tried different speeds, different amounts of pressure between the wheel and Frisbee . . our results were very poor. Then we built a curved shooter to keep the frisbee in contact with the wheel longer, hoping it would impart more velocity. That didn't work either. We now have a straight launcher using two C channels and three drive wheels propelling the Frisbee. It's very much like the one constructed in the Robot in 3 Days videos. Initially we started with only two wheels, but it was only throwing the Frisbee fifteen feet and couldn't even propel it high enough to hit any of the official sized targets. We thought it might need more power, so we added a third drive motor and wheel, but it didn't really improve our results. We're using five inch wheels by Bane Bots with the orange tread, all three rotating at the same velocity. Do we need to vary the speed between wheels? Is the rotational speed of the 5 inch wheels too slow? Do we need larger wheels? Is there any way we can drop a wheel and motor so we will have a better chance of keeping it all under 30 pounds? Any suggestions, advice, or knowledge you can share would be very greatly appreciated. Last year (our first) we were only able to field a 'defensive robot" that had no shooter at all. This year we would very much so like to participate more fully in the competition. Thanks again.