How Loud is Too Loud? (Cal Games)

[=Martin=Taylor=]

Team 100 has been spending an enormous amount of time preparing our robot for the California Robot Games.

We have rebuilt our ball-lifter, completely redesigned our 3-pt shooter, tuned up the drive train, and rebuilt our hopper.

But we have a problem. Due to a lack of sophisticated tools we were never able to balance our shooter. When spun at top speed it releases the most deafening racket I have ever heard on a FIRST robot. It quite literally sounds like a jackhammer or possibly even a machine gun. .

We don't know what causes this problem. The best hypothesis seems to be that at a certain speed the shooter's chain begins to vibrate making noise.

In fact, if it weren’t for the noise it wouldn't seem that anything was wrong. It seems to run fine, nothing breaks. We have also encased the entire shooter mechanism in fine-mesh chicken wire so that if anything did go wrong it probably wouldn't go flying.

My question: is our robot safe enough to compete? It sounds dangerous but it really isn't.