Middle school needs help still.

[TitaniumNyanKat]

Also, you should remove the 12-tooth gear and replace it with an 84-tooth gear, and have the 12-tooth gear on the same shaft as the 84 -tooth gear. If that doesn’t work, it’s either the angle or compression.

[The_Tenth]

@lacsap

Middle school is difficult when it comes to understanding gears. They seeing subsystems that seem to work, but have trouble figuring out why they work. VEX has links to gearing under their curriculum partner links, AutoDesk and RobotMatter. Plenty of other material if you google. What seems to be hindering this implementation is the notion that driving motors should b link with the same gears, otherwise one motor will try to outrun the other due to the different gear ratio. This of course depends how the motors are geared internally.

I am currently in middle school and I find this slightly offensive, although insulting may not be your intention. My first competition was back in October, and we competed in the High School division. We won Excellence and qualified for Nationals. I doubt their knowledge has anything to do with the fact that they are in middle school, a rookie high school student could easily make the same mistake.

[Zeus8686K]

@Aponthis

This. I didn’t look closely at the gearing the first time aroubd, but your one motor has a 7:1 ratio to the axle that the other motor it drives. It is basically doing nothing.

Except slowing the 7:1, would be actually be a disadvantage because of the motor resistance.

[lacsap]

@The Tenth

I am currently in middle school and I find this slightly offensive, although insulting may not be your intention. My first competition was back in October, and we competed in the High School division. We won Excellence and qualified for Nationals. I doubt their knowledge has anything to do with the fact that they are in middle school, a rookie high school student could easily make the same mistake.

No offense or insult intended. Rather my point is that the fundamental math skills relating to ratios are emerging at middle school level. Common Core standards introduce these skills in 6th grade and then continues in 7th grade. Moreover, there is the challenge of understanding that you are trading off speed for power in this case. High schoolers may be better handle on applying gear ratio concepts more consistently since they have learned these concepts and now putting them to practice.
My advice to teams continues to be is to look for primers on gear ratios when tackling flywheels. In this particular case, both motors driving gears should have the same size gears.
I do not doubt that there are middle schoolers who can explain gear ratios well. Our teams have some students who can, and some who can not.

[Cyber_brains]

@HeavyMetal974H

There are a few things that I think might help. I couldn’t tell from your picture if you had 4 or 2 motors, but if you only have 2 i would suggest 4. In addition, I would suggest a ratio of at least 25:1 in your gearing. For your build I would suggest a 5:1 gear ratio connected to a 3:1. This, in addition to your high speed motors, should give you a ratio of 30:1. If it won’t fire properly, you might need to go to low speed motors with higher gearing. If you’re going to the competition on the 6th or the 13th I can explain things better, if that didn’t make sense.

The gear ration would actually be 24:1 as high speed motors increase the gearing by 1.6, not 2. Turbo increases your speed by 2.4.

[robomasters974z]

Thanks for all your help. Especially Heavy Metal and Cyberbrains. The kids were able to get the ball to shoot lower goal this past weekend and spending more time with the above teams are still working on trying to get the launcher to go farther.