Is having a descoring arm on a ball bot worth it? Or should that motor be allocated to something better like a cap flipper or a brake? Just curious on your thoughts.
Depends on your region, don’t waste a motor if no one is actually scoring caps.
At this point in the season, I hope all teams have competed at least once and seen the competition. You should do an reanalysis of the game and rank the values of different mechanisms based on potential points received/taken away, ease to design and develop, etc.
If the teams you will be competing against have high scorers, then it might be worth your time. Also, I would always try to figure out a way to make a mechanism serve multiple purposes.
BTW, what do you mean by “a brake”?
I believe what he means by “brake” is a high torque arm that presses against the ground to provide extra traction and makes your robot more resistant to pushing.
If you are going to use a motor for an descorer it is best to make it a multi-tool. Such as a ramp block, cap flipper,pushing arm, and descorer
look at the Kalahari finals to see a good one motor cap scorer
if you have room you can make an arc that can actually score caps on posts, with a little spot to grip onto the cap with, and just flip it over onto the pole. may be worth it, idk
If it’s no extra cost in a motor or space, I don’t see a reason to not have one. Being able to do so is probably a plus, even if you rarely use it.
I would recommend having some way to counter a cap bot. Cause even if you’re in a region that doesn’t have many good cap bots, all it would take is one good team to shake things up a bit and make a good cap bot and you’d be very vulnerable, especially if said cap bot was with any decent shooter.
If a good, well practiced ball bot with a descorer and another good well practiced ball bot team up against one ball bot and one cap bot, one of the ball bots on each team will go for flags while the other goes for caps presumably. However if the other ball bot goes against the cap bot and plays good defense, the cap bot has made no progress or any points. If neither bot had a descorer then the only way to defend against a good cap bot is by pushing which is difficult. So all in all, build a descorer because it will pay off if you go against a hybrid or cap bot, will look good for judges, and alliances will be more inclined to pick you because of it. Good luck this season! Hope this sorta helped. If people are interested in discussing shooting mechanisms I would be happy to help so just comment or dm me. (I am especially good at flywheel designs and hoods yet I am familiar with punchers.)
Thanks for the reply’s everyone! Our team was just considering removing our descorer for a more efficient launcher. This I put has helped us gauge how we should go forward.
Yeah I was considering making ours do that. Has anyone developed a passive claw for grabbing caps like that?
I saw a video where there was just two bars than the cap could slide in.