Surprisingly the cannon extension will not provide as much accuracy as you may think. At least that is what we found from our prototyping.
You could use a spring then pull back a plate inside the turret with a winch. It would be semi simple design that would follow regulations.
What i have figured out, there are only 4 plausible ways of firing a ball.
- Single wheel shot (pitching machine on kickoff video)
- Multiple wheel shot (more advanced pitching maching, look at a batting cage)
- Catipult
- Pneumatic piston/spring shot (both similar in a platform pushing the ball out)
Don’t forget “Flywheel to linear transition” thrower"…
Can you show me an example. i can up with this basic list in like 2 min, so i want to know what the fly wheel to a linear transition is?
I’m not sure if this is what Blair was going for but this is what i’m envisioning. First place a ball on a cart like object that can carry the ball and make it travel on a short track. Then take a flywheel and bring it into contact with the cart to accelerate it. the cart should travel until it hits a stopper making it stop and any ball on it flying off. It seems like a nice compromise between a flywheel and some other sort cannon mechanism. You get consistency because you’re always shooting the same cart object, but it isn’t quite as fast and quickly repeatable as a straight flywheel. If you springload the cart so that it automatically comes back you wouldn’t have to devote another motor the cart mechanism.
that still is categorized in the one wheel system, its just a small modification.
Eh, something like like. Your’s is better. There was a thread on here before about converting rotational into linear motion. That was what I referring to. But it seems rather feasible. The other option is to have a flywheel somehow coupled to a rod so that you can throw the rod forward. Rod hits ball, ball goes out.
that might be fine as long as you remember that the ball we are using for the game is made to absorbs force so it would require 2x the force to send the ball the same distance. plus a spring would constantly lose it rebound as the match went on.
think crankshaft or camshafts too
also how about gravity fed trbuchet style or bow and string mangonels. crossbowish stuff.
so basically simply put the list gets to be
angular kinetic energy (flywheels and the such)
gravitational potential energy (obvious)
elastic potential energy (bows. cross bows. springs. bungees)
compressed gas
electrical(as in motors so i guess this is kinda angular kinetic)
mind power(technically unless you need to send radio waves from your head you dont even need to have the driver do this. someone in the stands can do this… and even shoot down opponent’s shots. but maybe violates GP? i unno
some sort of chemical reaction or sumthing. probably not legal
that was like the post of the day for me. ahahahaha. Like Wonderboy, mind bullets. (Tenacious D reference for all you newbs)