As almost every shooter I have seen succeeding in competitions so far has utilized a flywheel, have any teams been able to succeed with a different design? 4505 has been working on a shooter for tie breaking that isn’t flywheel powered (during build season we developed a flywheel shooter that was recently removed from the robot) but we seem to be alone.
Our shooter doesn’t use a flywheel per say but it does have a lot of weight on the axle. It’s fairly consistent (the inconsistency there is we’re pretty sure is due to other causes, not RPM loss) and we haven’t had any major issues during testing. I’ll let you know how well it “succeeds” when we compete at our first event this weekend.:rolleyes:
This year team 4613 has a very successful shooter that does not use a flywheel, but is instead a pair of belts that act as both their intake and shooter.
If it has a high mass axle, I assume something is rotating, correct? If so, can you detail what is actually propelling the balls?
We made up for a lack of inertia, with more power.
If you look closely, I think around :19 - :23 seconds into their video, you might see a flywheel, unless thats a gear, I see one on each side of their shooter sandwiched between two aluminum sheets.
I think the OP means flywheel as in any rotary shooting wheel, so they’re asking about catapults etc…
shooter for tie breaking that isn’t flywheel powered
So … a pre-loaded spring-powered Nerf cannon? With the right set of linkages, i can see this not even needing a motor…
The main issue with using a non-flywheel type shooter is rate of fire, which is especially valuable this year. The flywheel option is also a proven method time and again, and for its simplicity it is usually the go-to for most FRC games that involve shooting balls.
As compared to catapult systems and linear punches they take up a relatively small packaging space on the robot, and have a small resource requirement to build.
The goal for this was to create something to unload the pre loaded fuel during auto while we also deliver a gear. We think that something like this picture that rotates once with elastic tension (likely) and throws all the balls out could be good for auto.https://s14.postimg.org/43pj0d4g1/IMG_3716.png
We originally tested belts like 4613 and eventually went with a flywheel, but our poorly built hopper drove our captain to remove the shooter because of inefficiency.