Hi, currently I’m prototyping a flywheel system on my robot. It’s a vertical flywheel setup, two wheels on top and two on bottom, set together so that there is a slight compression as the ball goes through. I have a compound gear ratio of 16:1, using the regular 393 motors (Our highspeed and turbo gears have not come in yet). I’m wondering if these things combined with approximately a 40 degree angle has been tested to give any distance at all?
Our other team is building a pneumatic catapult, but that wont work for us without completely redesigning our chassis and intake system, which we don’t have enough time to do before the next competition.
I don’t know if exactly that setup will work, it might, but even if someone else has that identical setup that did work doesn’t mean this one will, because build quality and low friction are very important. However, I do think that 1:16 on high torque motors (1600 rpm theoretical output) is a bit slow, most teams have a had success with around a 1:25 to 1:30 gear ratio. So speed it up a bit and combined with good build quality, it should work well.
It would be interesting to see if you have any success with that gearing. I would say stay above around 1:20 as that seems to give the best results from what we have seen so far.
Shouldn’t this speed be fast enough since he is using a dual flywheel, just setup vertically, assuming he has the correct compression and good build quality? Dual flywheels using a 1:16.8 ratio are capable of launching full field with motor speeds set under 80.
Would I be wrong to assume this? I have not built a vertical dual flywheel, but I have built a horizontal flywheel. It would be nice to be able to learn more about the vertical.
a 19:1 total gearing is minimum for my dual flywheel setup to shoot full court. And when it is like that, it barely makes it. We are using 4" wheels though. From your post, it sounds like you might need more compression. A perfect compression will make or brake a good robot. Too much, and the dense ones don’t go as far, too little and the squishy ones don’t go as far.
I would agree with many others that your rpm is a bit low but if your competition is coming up soon, i would suggest, if you have an intake and feed, just shooting from close by and just specializing as a field player instead of rebuilding to shoot full field and potentially not making it in time to be even be a semi accurate base shooter. If you have the time, switch to high speed or even turbo motors and you should be able to shoot full court.
The dual flywheels on top of each other are pretty much the same as dual flywheels beside each other, unless you vary the sizes of the wheels to give the ball some spin. So I’m sure 1:16.8 could work (I haven’t specifically seen whichever robot you’re talking about), but it is low to compared to what the vast majority of teams have.
The reasoning behind the low gear ratio was VEX has been taking a while to get our high speed and turbo motor kits in, so I’m trying to not stall out the regular 343 motor at this point. I’m going to aim for a redesigned 21:1 ratio when we get the new parts in. As for the 16:1 ratio, we had minimal success despite multiple steps to remove friction, the motors over heat and stall rather quickly, so the redesign is necessary