I am qualified for worlds and i am planning on a rebuild before the competition i want to make a secondary shooter for preloads. I was just wondering what are the benefits of each shooter and what you guys prefer. Thanks in advance.
By catapult are you referring to a slip gear style catapult or a wingus dingus motor power release style one?
Don’t forget double sided cam catapults.
Ya, like some sort of slip release (whether it be nautilus, cam, or slip gear) or motor power release.
I am talking solely on slip gear mechanism
Here’s a link to the double sided cam catapult.
Its the blue team closed to the camera.
If you look closely, you can see that the cut out the cam so that they would get 2 shots per 1 rotation.
My only concern about a double drop off cam is that you need to store the same amount of energy in the rubber bands over half the distance, which requires double the torque. Therefore, you would essentially have the same result as gearing your motors 2:1. If you have enough torque for that, you would probably be better off just gearing your motors up more. It uses space more efficiently, and you don’t need to use as much plastic for it, so you can save that plastic for other parts of the robot. If you do decide, however, to go this route, the same effect can be achieved with a slip gear. All you need to do with a slip gear is shave off multiple sets of teeth, so they aren’t all consecutive.
Generally punchers are easier to load and have a higher fire rate but a slightly lower accuracy than catapults. Of course tuning will make the accuracy higher, but this is generally true.
Punchers have a little lower accuracy, but are far easier to get working. Punchers also tend to take up less space, and don’t make the robot jump as much.
I completely agree, we had two catapults (cam) and a single flywheel at one point, and the two catapults made the robot jump too much. But then again, I would recommend just using one system for shooting and getting that one system to work really well
Puncher is the way to go, since the advantage of speed will far outweigh the advantage of accuracy.
I completely disagree. Accuracy is much more important than speed. In theory, the fields will be cleared (either all shot into the goals, or hoarded) in roughly 1 minute (give or take). If you have lift, you can save 10 seconds for that lift. Therefore, you have 35ish seconds to shoot the loads. There is no need to shoot the balls in 15 seconds, if you make 60% of them. It is much more advantageous to shoot them in 30 seconds, and get 90% accuracy.
This is true. I did not think about the fact that fields will be cleared extremly fast