Ball Magnet

[hipsterjr]

Members on my team are talking about using a brush roller instead of the solid type shown here, but I doubt that it will put the required back spin on the ball. Has anyone tried brushs yet?

[Ryan Dognaux]

Very interesting idea, thanks for sharing the video with everyone.

A few quick questions -

1) What materials on the rollers have people found works best when using this kind of setup?

2) How high from the ground do you have your roller mounted? During your trials, have you found a roller position that works best?

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by vamfun

In your video you mentioned shelf paper. How would you legally bind that to a roller?

We used clear packaging tape to attach the inner end, and a bit on the outer corners after wrapping the shelf liner around the roller a bit more than one turn.

I have not found any rules prohibiting the use of packaging tape. If you know of one, please let us all know! (rule number)

Originally Posted by hipsterjr

Has anyone tried brushs yet?

We sort of tried a brush, it was flaps of the shelf liner, like we used on last year's robot to lift the balls up the helix. It did not work at all. But we didn't use "real" brushes. I think it needs more friction than you can get with brushes.

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux

1) What materials on the rollers have people found works best when using this kind of setup?

2) How high from the ground do you have your roller mounted? During your trials, have you found a roller position that works best?

1- We tried wheel tread and it works well to grip the ball, but it seems to need to have a full surface, not individual strips...the ball falls off when it encounters a significant gap. Shelf liner seems to work well, but we are concerned about it's life. It might be just fine, and it is cheap and can be replaced easily if it's secured with tape like we did on the latest video.

2- seems to need the roller pretty far up the ball to get enough traction on the ball to be able to spin it.