I was just searching for a place to purchase flywheels if ever decide to upgrade to a high goal shooter later on, but im not sure where to look. Andymark and vexpro dont have them, cant exactly find them on mcmaster-carr. Where do you buy yours? Do you hex them yourselves?
We use this wheel: http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-0436.htm as our shooter wheel. You may also want to look into the Stealth wheels (like http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-3435.htm) as an option.
Trying to avoid a boring discussion of angular momentum (“the flywheel effect”), I’d just say, try to concentrate as much mass as far away from the rotational center as possible.
Weld a thick, large diameter plate onto the axle, add wheels or sprockets that you don’t really need to the rotating system, etc.
My team is using a 4" x 2" Colson as the shooting wheel, and as extra momentum, we machined roughly a .5" x 3.75" stainless steel wheels to keep the shooter spinning after continuous shots.
Some of the expanding wheels are popular. Here are a few that are common:
https://www.mcmaster.com/#2474k76/=16ii2p9
https://www.mcmaster.com/#2497k5/=16ii3n0
A quick and dirty way if you have any hex bore gears lying around would be just adding them onto the shaft your shooter wheels are powered from. Ideally they’d be steel for a little more mass then aluminum.
We just waterjet cut and then trued on the lathe some .5in thick cold-roll steel plates. And then broached them for .5 hex.
With a fairline shooter wheel it works pretty well.
A distinction needs to be made between flywheels (i.e. methods of storing energy in the form of angular momentum) and flywheels (i.e. wheels that spin at high speeds used to shoot game pieces). The FIRST community doesn’t have a good method of distinguishing between the two, and I have yet to hear one from industry.
If you are looking for energy storage, a popular COTS method is to use steel hex-broached gears from AndyMark. Really, any method of getting lots of weight spinning as fast as possible at a far distance from an axle will work. If you have welding capability, you can weld a steel disc to a steel shaft. I’ve also heard of filling a pneumatic tire with lead shot (or something else heavy and liquid-like), but I’m not sure how well that will go over with inspectors.
If you are looking for a shooter wheel, AndyMark, VexPro, WCP, and other vendors sell varies types and sizes of shooting flywheels. Almost any wheel will work to a degree when combined with the right compression, wheel speed, contact time with ball, etc. Some combinations and geometries will work better than others though, so prototyping is necessary.