For those of you who are making ball shooters this year, how far can you shoot the ball, and can you do it at a decent speed?
Right now, we have about 10-12 feet at a decent speed
We can make the ball into a trailer 10 feet away (back of trailer to front of robot). I have a feeling this is further than would ever need to be shot during gameplay.
By decent speed, do you mean balls/second or the time it takes for the balls to get from the shooter to the trailer? (Line drives sure would be fun to watch!) We are firing at about 4 balls/second.
Decent speed by the air time on the ball, the time we are going up the loader is going to be increased, its way to slow,
Ours is quite similar. However, we agree its more further than necessary.
Very easy for us without going against a mobile target. 
Now that’s another story.
Week 1 of regionals this year will be more anticipated by spectators than ever before for those participating in subsequent events.
We shoot a line drive, and can get 12 feet. The time I was talking about is balls per second. Im not sure how many balls per second we will get because we havent finished the shooter/ball delivery yet. Our shooter wont have any problems getting the balls out.
we’re thinking, that 5 feet or below, is the best distance for this game…
I’d love to see a video of it if you have a chance to put one up!
I dont have a video of the shooter, and I dont know when I will be allowed to post one.
I do have a video of our method of delivering the ball to the shooter.
It is currently being powered by drills, but we will be using a CIM so the speed will be close. That shows about how fast we will be getting balls off.
3 foot max, we are money from whenever we are in range
We’re planning on about five feet maximum, but realistically, probably closer to three. I think with the orbit balls not having a uniform surface, and with your opponents always moving, getting a orbit ball beyond that distance will be quite difficult. Although it would awesome if some teams program their robot to lead the targets. That would be soooooo coooooooool.
Working on it…
we have a ways to go though
we are shooting 16ft line drives, but our we do not shoot as many balls per second as other teams. right now we are 93% accurate.
We do about 6 feet, much more than needed.
Range around ~ 8 feet
We were orginally looking at a 10 - 12 foot range but noticed two things we when started to test it out. First, after each shot, the motor and wheels would not get back up to speed and we would lose about 4 - 6 inches off each shot, so shots would start to miss after the first 3 or 4 unless we only shot 1 per second. Secondly, the longer shots tended to drift left and right due to the geometry of the orbit balls - even with a nice top spin. We were looking at about 66% - 75% accuracy with that configuration. So we regeared down to a lower rpm and greater torque - so the rpm recovery time was almost instanteous, and we found we didn’t have any drifting. So we are looking at the 0 - 5 foot range for shooting effectively. We can shoot 20 balls, with almost 100% accuracy, in less than 6 seconds at those distances.
Glenn - have a great season - too bad we will be at a regional with you guys this year! I wish you all great success!
Steve
We’re also working on a speed sensor for the shooter, to keep the shooter wheel rpm constant.
At 620 rpm, we were at 7 feet with 75% accuracy. However, that was just our latest prototype. The real thing will be ~4200rpm max with guided rails for more accuracy… so we’ll see 
Of course we’re scaling it back down to 10-12 feet for accurate shots, and 3-4 feet for maximum throughput. I do like the idea of a miraculous cross-field shot though…or a ‘rain’ of orbit balls from 20 feet in the air :ahh:.
Ours is shooting at 8 feet with about 98% accuracy
We got 5 inches, 100% accuracy.
We’re now re-gearing our shooter.