Hello VEX community, recently for the new IQ challenge (Slapshot) I was looking into possible ways I might launch the disks. One of the things I was looking into was a linear slide, or possibly a VEX IQ rendition of a VRC puncher. However, based on my current mechanical understanding this is only possible with slip gears, or a gear that has its teeth disengage with the linear slide teeth mount that the mechanism runs on. R13 prevents any modifications to the VEX IQ gear teeth to create a slip gear, so we’d need to make something functionally equivalent, which leads to my question, is there a mechanical mechanism that I could use that is functionally equivalent to that of a slip gear in my use case?
If you played pitching in, you might be familiar with a chochoo… There were all kinds of launchers from this year, just put them on their side to launch forward and not up.
Im not gonna reveal too much, but Ive already built a puncher that works very well… try not to think of linear motion. Try angular. As long as the point of contact with the disk is parralell to the ground, it will work the same as a puncher.
I understand not wanting to reveal too much, but may I ask a question? When your puncher design moves forward and contacts the disk, it moves in an arc shape instead of a straight line, correct?
My team has a mechanism designed that pretty much pulls an axel very hard back and than it releases forward with a lot of force. For pitching in we used it to make a mini tank that popped cans of soda but now it might actually has a use and we’re considering using it for our robot.
Yes. Like the space launch start up spinlaunch, angular momentum can be easily turned into lateral momentum as long as the release or collision point of the item being launched is hit in the right spot. Although an arc is a very good way of putting it.