Our team is building a turret and our only issue so far has been finding a way to move the balls up the center of the launcher without interfering with the turn table. We know the ball has to move up the center of the turn table (the turn table is centered over the chassis as well) any ideas on an intake to move the balls quick and efficiently without getting in the way of the turntable/flywheel? Or what have some of the other turrets done? any ideas are welcome!!
have 2 conveyor belts on each side of the intake. These would drop off the ball into a funnel regardless of turret orientation.
Do you mean to attach it horizontal to the chassis? or vertically to the turn table? my problem is carrying the ball vertically through the turn table to the flywheel without interfering with the turn tables rotation.
RZ2000
That actually brings up another intake question. Following a front roller intake, (this is the first stage of our intake), what is the best way to funnel multiple balls into a channel only wide enough for one ball? We have had some jamming issues with our roller, Where two balls will get stuck side by side and block out any other balls from being pushed through. What have you guys done to solve this problem?
My team uses angled c-channels or polycarbonate side panels to accomplish this. To prevent jamming, we just tell our driver to be careful not to pick up 2 balls at exactly the same time. If this is not enough for you, or you don’t have the same driver at all competitions, you might be able to fix the problem by staggering the side panels, so one ball moves into the center before the other. I’m not sure if it actually works, but I think it would.
Firstly, how wide is your turn table? that will make a massive difference in the amount of different intakes you can use. The wider it is the better, although some turn table designs become unstable at a certain point. (Not sure exactly what that point is, it depends on bracing) Assuming you have already built the turn table, you probably know all that. Side conveyors are simplest way to intake into a turret, although sometimes they can distribute the ball unevenly depending on the rotation of the turret, causing different firing distances. If you use four side conveyors or something similar then it should be perfectly even, We used 2 vertical side chains and 2 angled chains, the angled chains worked at side conveyor belts, but still allowed the balls to actually enter the intake. It always shot the same distance no matter what direction the turret was facing. Our previus build sometimes shot different distances depending on the turret angle, which was disastrous for accuracy, it had two side conveyors, which had to be built incredibly small to fit in our turn table. Where as our second build had a much larger turn table.
This is a photo of our first build’s intake, during deconstruction.
And our second build, during construction with the turret taken off.
Unfortunately the intakes were just slightly narrower than two balls, which caused some problems.
We use a 10" wide intake, which pushes balls into a funnel, the floor of the funnel is made out of slightly bent plastic, which causes the balls to roll towards the secondary intake, which is the width of one ball. We haven’t had any problems with balls getting caught side by side since we added the plastic.
Our turn table is about 10 and a half inches wide. However we have bearings and supports that take up about two inches of room on the inside, leaving us with only about 6 inches to work with. also because of the flywheel we can only build up about 7 inches from the ground before we interfere with the flywheel (the top of our chassis is 4 inches from the ground) so we only have three inches to build an intake. Our main issue is building without getting in the way of the flywheel. Is chain the best idea for the vertical section of the intake??
I like the idea of the staggered plates, thats very clever, we will definitely try that (assuming we don’t hear a better idea) thanks for the idea!!
Sorry for replying to late. To make sure that 2 balls would not jam, there are many ways to fix this:
- Use c channels at angles that ‘funnel’ the balls to a central point _/
- Move the robot while intaking
- Have only one angles c channel and the main intake point at the very side l_/
So the intake has to be at maximum 1" wide on each side and 3" tall? Sounds like the same problem I had with my first design, minus the 3" tall limit.
I think your only option is chain side rollers, as flaps would be too wide and too tall, you could try a succession of small wheels chained together, but I don’t really see how that would be better than chain, and it probably wouln’t fit. So it might be that you just have to go with 3" tall chain side rollers. I might suggest four of them if you can fit it, I had two on my first build and it got jammed sometimes. (The system was 4" wide exactly, so a screwhead messed everything up) The smallest system I could think of was using strapping, so it was not amazingly strong:
My team brings the balls up at the rear of the robot and drops it down onto the “turret” at or very close to the rotation point. This makes it more of an adjustable arm than a true turret, and doesn’t get full 360 degree rotation. Its angle range in a little over 180 degrees. The decision on this was due to spacing and the desire to have intakes on 3 sides, with almost the entire bottom layer of the robot open for ball flow.
I like The idea of only having one angled c-channel. The only difference I would have is instead of having one at 90 degrees (to cancel out the funnel on one side) I would have them both angled, only with angles different enough to ensure that the balls are sucked into the central point at different sides depending on what side (or what angled plate) the ball is being intake from. Great idea!
RyanBrian are you on 563C?
No problem! I feel that having a intake point on one side eliminates the problem of multiple balls jamming as it is impossible as one ball will always be able to move in a straight line. Of course, centralized intakes work better with turrets as they almost always have to be centered. Also, central intakes allow for some multi-directional intakes.
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Our C team is acually having the exact same problem with their turret bot, ill definatly show them this thread thanks guys @RyanBrian good luck hope you get it figured out. Keep us posted.