Team 3357 slow motion kicker

videos recorded at higher frame rate (~120) and then slowed down further.
just mainly a prototype with possible improvements to make to it.

That’s cool! Great to see the deformation in the ball and then watch it spring back.

I’m pretty impressed with the amount of “kick” you’re getting from just one 3/4" cylinder.

Have you thought about how you’re going to posess the ball prior to kicking it? We’ve found a sticky 2" diameter cylinder running off two FP’s geared down 25:1 actually works pretty good a putting backspin on the ball… but we’ve had to design our kicking arm in a U shape so we could put the cylinder in the middle of the “U”.

Jason

P.S. What camera were you using?

It looks like it might go beyond the bumper perimeter. If it does you’ll probably need to mod it so it doesn’t go out as far.

@dtengineering
its my dads camera actually lol
its a Sony handycam (HDR-CX12)

@IBdrummer
this years rules state your allowed to go out of the bumper perimeter for max of 2 seconds to “manipulate” the ball

<G30>
BALL Interaction Volume – Solely for the purposes of interacting with a BALL, MECHANISMS that are below the BUMPER ZONE may extend up to the BUMPER PERIMETER, for a period not exceeding two seconds.

You are allowed to break the frame perimeter for two seconds, but must always be within your bumper perimeter.

On another note, how are you getting that much power out of a single pneumatic? I don’t see any sort of mechanical stop or elastic assist.

One reason this design works quite well is because it mounts to the kicker near the hinge point. This means it can transfer full pneumatic force on the kicker throughout the entire travel arc without the piston having to accelerate much or travel very far, which can reduce the efficiency of energy delivered.

-RRLedford

2702 did this with the same type of camera, same concept, different prototype:

The slow-mo really helps debugging. You can see in the light-kick video that we didn’t have enough mass on the hammer, so it actually bounced off the ball without transferring all its energy to it.

If you don’t have access to high speed camera, this may be within reach.

With lots of light, they can take amazingly good slow-motion movies for debugging and education. A professor showed a basketball shot and had IMAQ vision tracking the trajectory of the basketball, plotting speed in X and Y versus time. Pretty slick.

Greg McKaskle

At end, you also joined the tensioning arm to the kicker arm (or somehow prevented them from separating during kick arc).
In weaker shot videos, the kicker was impacted and then rebounded away from contact with the tension arm, then it hits the ball with only its own too-little momentum, thus bouncing backward off ball and impacting into contact with tension arm again, then being driven forward a 2nd time after re-contacting the tension arm, then back onto the ball for a 2nd time. Lots of time lost with nothing accelerating the ball, for lack of contact during the kicker arm rebounds.
This really shows how a slo-mo vid can reveal what is actually happening!
-RRledford