Getting the ball to the launcher

As of right now, we are planning on doing a roller intake for the ball and get it in front of out linear puncher. However, we don’t exactly know how to get the ball to the puncher. If anyone can help, we would appreciate it.

I do not have a ready answer for you, but I can say that this has been a problem with competition robots since at least 2006 (when I started). A lot of people can build a shooter, and a lot can build a pick-up, but tying them together can be challenging.

I think you should have the intake feed the ball onto a ramp. The ball will roll down the ramp and fall into place

There are a ton of ways to do it, and which method you select will depend on how wide you want your intake to be, your space requirements, whether you want a front or back intake, and the speed of each system. Basically, it’s complicated :slight_smile:

That said, here are 3 really clean and simple ways to load from NBN.

The basic idea is you conveyor the ball up to a ramp or angled piece where it can roll down into the puncher. This can take some experimenting to get right but it’s a pretty basic concept to build and tune.

Good luck!

Depending on how you build your puncher, you could have the conveyor go above it and drop the balls into it, if this cannot work you could have the conveyor go next to the puncher on a slope and have the balls roll into it