Our team was kinda blindsided. At our workshop we were full field shooters with extra range, but when we got to our first competition this weekend, the airholes in the ball threw us off completely. We were able to add some compression to help but it still wasn’t enough to get the performance we had before. We were just using a set of acrylic wheens on our shooter… but noticed a lot of teams using Fairlane wheels… in particular big fairlane rollers.
Teams that are using these wheels… have you found a particular one better than others?
What makes these fairlane wheels better? is it the grip? I read they expand slightly at speed… is it that? I just want to pick people’s brains
Your wheel choice is not going to make broken balls more consistent. The issue is that damaged balls compress quicker, leading to less KE transferred into the ball, which would happen with essentially any type of launcher wheel.
We use 4 inch fairlanes (I think neoprene but I might be wrong?) because they were an easy solution to give us enough rotational inertia (which might be a problem if using hollow acrylic wheels) and work in the rpm ranges we wanted (up to around 8k). We used the space coast products hubs which were good. They are definitely sticky when you first get them but we found by the end of Plano the stickiness was mostly gone. We are going to compare with our spares and see if that caused some of our shooter problems. Overall, we were pleased with them. 9/10
