I know flywheeled shooters are going to be a common theme this year, what are you all using for backing? Standoffs? Polycarb? I’m interested to see what others have come up with.
What do you mean by ‘backing’? A picture might help, or at least a few words of description.
Do you mean adjustable hood?
We’ve tested with naked polycarbonate and then with gaffers tape for some grip. The backing with gaffers tape had more spin, but didn’t go as far. So, likely to be uncovered clear polycarb.
This is perfectly logical - a ball that isn’t spinning is slipping against the hood instead of rolling against it. The ball’s center is moving at about the tip speed of the wheel instead of the ball’s edge, so it should leave the shooter with roughly twice the speed for a given RPM.
That said, I would be careful - how consistent is relying on the ball to slip the same way every time to get range, versus adding grip and just increasing the shooter wheel RPM to compensate? It may be consistent enough, may not be. And I’m sure you guys know what you’re doing, more posting this thought for those reading this advice and deciding what to do with it.
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Agree.
Need to do more testing, with slomo. Compression on a slippery surface might make the ball slide with less roll. Less compression will make it spin and have less roll. Fine balance.
We’ve been running our prototype shooter with a polycarb hood too. It has proven to be very consistent. We’re dropping long shots within a foot or so of each other at the target end. We’re using about 1" of compression, plus driving the whole thing with two Falcons geared at 1:1.33. These cargo balls seem to have a pretty consistent interaction with the surface of the polycarb. Whether that will remain the same as the cargo wears is an open question, though we do have more on the way and hope to test the ones we’ve been using vs. the new ones this week. We’ll see what that tells us about the interaction.
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