Hi everyone! My team and I are new this season, so we were following the BLZ-i tutorial. For some reason, our shooter is faulty. At times it works completely fine, but then when we try again it slows down. Right now we have two motors connected to it, but it still doesn’t give us enough power to effectively shoot a flex wheel. Does anyone know the issue with this, or how we can fix it?
My team used the same shooter design and we found that there was a lot of friction that prevented max performance, we had to re build it and we found a sheared baring so my suggestion is to check for friction points.
Add an extra mounting point at the top.
We initially had one, but it slowed down the wheel.
You need a mounting point at the top. Your flywheel will oscillate too much for it to be effective if it doesn’t have one.
If it slowed down the wheel… then that’s a symptom of something else being wrong, not a fault of a better supported axle.
I would look at:
friction
balance
rpm not to exceed 3k
and that the motors are working together… that they start at the exact same time to they aren’t fighting each other, that the watts are equal and not to exceed 1.5-2 per motor except when launching.
Yep. Friction.
You are trying to shoot disks correct??
Bracing it should help consistency because some of the energy that should be making the flywheel spin is being lost to the axle shaking and rattling around. To brace it all you need is a bearing on the top of your flywheel(preferably on a c-channel)
It’s worth mentioning that a properly_balanced wheel won’t oscillate, and won’t benefit from an upper bearing support.
That said, this is under constant conditions (spinning but NOT launching). When a launch happens there’s significant sideways force on the axle, and the wheel also goes out of balance/round briefly. THIS is what the second bearing is for.
If you’re relying on a second bearing to keep your wheel in balance… you are going about it the wrong way.