Our shooter shoots balls at different psi levels, significantly different from each other. Any ideas of what may be causing it?
In which direction? Do higher-PSI balls or lower-PSI balls go further?
Well, fundamentally a ball at higher psi is larger. So it’s compressed more by the shooter wheels, it stays in longer contact with the shooter wheels. That can result in two outcomes: If your shooter wheel speed is tightly regulated and stays constant, you’re transferring more energy to the ball, it’s ejected faster and should fly higher resp. further. It’s also possible, however, that your shooter wheel speed is bogged down while its in longer contact with the ball. In that case, the results can vary and be somewhat harder to predict.
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This may or may not be your problem, but 3636 just made a fantastic Open Alliance post about a similar issue. They talk all about the problem and their solution in this post: 3636 Open Alliance 2022 Build Thread - #25 by _cmb
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Posting a picture of your shooter mechanism will give a ton of useful feedback!
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If the lower psi balls are coming out slower, a bit more compression may help.
If the higher psi balls are coming out slower, a bit less compression may help.
Whichever way, using compliant wheels is likely to reduce the effect.
If you can’t find a combination of wheels and spacing that produces a sufficiently consistent shot, you may want to think about mounting your rollers (or hood if you have a hooded shooter) on some sort of spring to control the force of contact rather than the spacing.
Early in the build season, I was experimenting with varying levels of compression for different ball pressures, and discovered that using 2 narrow and compressive (urethane type) wheels separated by a few inches, rather than a single roller, improved accuracy greatly. The multiple contact points on the ball with this config do not differ to the same degree as the widest diameter of the ball with varying levels of pressure, and the total pressure can be changed by moving the narrow wheels closer together or further apart.
I’m not sure what your configuration looks like, but if you show me a photo, I can try to provide additional guidance.
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