Hi everyone. Since we started prototyping there are lots of options for shooter. As we think there are 5 of them. I wanted to ask what teams will do and which one do you think is more efficient.
Rollers on both side of the shooter
One roller in the side of the shooter (similar to kitbot)
One roller at the top and one roller at the bottom
One at the top of the shooter
One roller at the top and one roller at the bottom + 2 rollers on the sides
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Also, it will be really helpful to hear from other teams’ experiences.
Another question I would like to ask whether it is possible to give a spin for the note by changing the speeds of individual wheels?
I don’t think any of the above base architectures really can get any meaningful spin on the note, it just deforms too much. You can only squeeze the note so much to impart energy , but it has a relatively high moment of inertia for its weight.
Video here. The fast wheel is going about 2000 rpm, 4inch wheels with 4inches of compression or so. You can see the forbidden Cheeto dust come off in the prototype, I think this is largely down to wheel face width.
My team did, we didn’t get any video but it was not good, you lost all your energy when the compression changed direction. It ended up only being able to shoot a couple feet
It depends how much contact each of the Top/Down Left/Right has with the Note.
For example, you could have most of the acceleration coming from the Top/Down wheels while the Left/Right wheels don’t compress the Notes from the side much, acting more as a stabilizer. You could even have free spinning rollers on the sides with motorized rollers on Top/Bottom. All for the purpose of consistency in aim which seems to be a problem due to the flexibility of the Notes.
Does anyone have any decent advice on how to induce stable spin?
We tried a couple of different configurations in a prototype, and actually found that two flywheels spinning at the same rate in the opposite direction (with about 5 inches of compression) produced the most consistent flight.
I was expecting a differential speed on each wheel creating a spin would make it fly flatter and more consistently than our results. Curious as to what others have experienced.
I am waiting for the team that makes an arm that throws it like a frisbee. I really hope no one thinks that is a good idea and does it but I really want to see it.
Our team is prototyping both (what we’re calling) hamburger and hotdog style shooters! The hamburger has the rollers on the top and bottom, while the hotdog has the rollers on either side
So far our hotdog shooter is looking really good! We’ve made lots of progress and just began testing.
But… the horizontal top and bottom rollers look like both a hamburger (side view) and a hotdog (top view), while the vertical rollers look like neither. They’re fun names, but I think they’re more confusing that saying vert/horizontal.
