I haven’t seen any really large home-made flywheels. Wouldn’t you like to have a 9" wheel? My team doesn’t have access to 5" wheels, so they are playing around with building their own large flywheel. We’ll see if it works out or not.
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Cool, if it doesn’t work I would suggest switching to aluminum parts so it is lighter.
Make sure to have graphite, white lithium, and plenty of sleep. also, since its heavier, you wont have as much acceleration.
Your windage is going to be very high, might make it difficult to attain the speed you want. But give it a shot
I wouldn’t worry about that too much. your wheel is only going to have to go a fraction the rpm so you can use a stronger gear ratio. The biggest problem I see with a custom wheel is inconsistency in your throw speed and direction because the wheel is not going to be as perfectly round as the pre made vex ones.
Really cool idea though. Id like to see something like this incorperated!
A couple of problems that need to be overcome to make this concept work are weight, and balance. Both of these are pretty easily solved (I think). I’m just waiting for the team to brainstorm and come up with the solutions themselves.
With this current iteration… Oh the oscillation! Oh the shaking at high speeds! Although, (even with this type of construction) I believe you could take the time to tune and balance the wheel fairly well.
What does your team see as pros of having such a large wheel?
The ability to use high strength axles for the flywheel is what started the idea.
A larger mass flywheel seems attractive for the rate of fire benefits.
There are better ways to get a large mass flywheel, but this one also provides for a slower RPM at the flywheel.
More than anything right now it’s a thought and prototyping exercise.
Larger Flywheel
I literally 4 hours before you posted this topic I had with the same idea. This is our implementation so far. We plan to use it at our next competition in about 2 weeks. It’s on a 1:15 with two motors and was flinging balls about as far as our 1:28 5inch flywheel. I’ll give the details in a PM, but I won’t release it publicly for a while.
This looks really awesome 
If I tried to make a homemade wheel I doubt it would end well 
Tabors comment really sums up how awesome this will be if it works: “Once you get it up to speed. The fire rate will be hilarious”
The chain looks really shaky on the right side… will that affect the flywheel?
Please be sure you loctite the screws in so they don’t fly off at an inopportune moment.
And please wear your safety glasses!
It was just a test to see how balanced the wheel was and how well it would fire. The chain didn’t affect it while moving due to the tension being constant.
Just for fun, I thought you might like to see the flywheel version that is kind of opposite of the heavy flywheel posted above.
Here it is…
