So, everyone knows about the 3 basic launchers, flywheeeeeeel, Catapult, and Linear Puncher. Our team just wanted to know if anyone had any ideas for different kinds of ball launchers, thx! (Also if this is already a thread then i’m sorry, but I couldn’t find one)
I don’t know if this is really feasible but here’s a unique idea. You could gear up a horizontally swinging arm to intense speeds. Then once it has reached the correct speed you could raise a ball up with the hopes of smacking it kinda like a baseball bat. You would need some way of making it go a bit vertically too though, not sure how you would do that.
Also, this would probably be very inefficient but hey its off meta.
Early season we had a two ball kicker. It was very hard to load balls for and took up way to much space.
A piston that shoots forward could launch the ball. It would be similar to the shooting mechanisms used in Toss Up.
would i need pneumatics?
@7517j It never made it past the prototyping stage, there might be some pictures in our design notebook, i can check on Thursday.
ok thx 4 the help
This just sounds like a puncher that doesn’t move linearly. It’s not too hard to make. I’ve seen one be rank 1 at a comp
can u send a pic of one? Sorry for any inconvenience
a battering ram
That would work perfectly! (destroys flags)
At least it would toggle them…
Trebuchets will be the meta, mark my words.
This was legitimately my first design for the season. I’ve come so far…
@TitanRey15 was working on a pneumatic punched last time we spoke. Haven’t heard back in awhile. Seemed pretty optimistic about it.
A double flywheel with adjustable speeds for spin with vision sensors would be basically unbeatable. Albeit very difficult to build. And code. And tube. … Yeah, lots of work.
IDK how you would reload it, buuuuuuuut…
A slide action, like the ones that pistols use. You have a flywheel at the start of a short “barrel” (made of c-channels on top of each other), and behind that there’s a linear slide (passive or not idk) behind it that acts as the slide and “firing pin”. Then, there’d be a “magazine” consisting of a roller intake beneath it, (or it could be using springs or rubber bands like the real thing). In “neutral”, the slide would block the incoming balls, when “loading”, it would draw back and let a ball pop up into the chamber and return to neutral. Finally, it would fire by pushing the ball forward into the spun-up flywheel and launch the ball like a bullet!
It wastes a ton of motors, but hey, it’s cool.
Do you have any pictures or videos? Sounds cool to see that in action.
Of which? The double flywheel is hypothetical. The pics of the pneumatic puncher aren’t mine to share. (But it looks pretty cool) And the spinning hammer was very short lived. I have pics of my derivative shooter, though. But, while it’s still very unique, it didn’t work the best.
The spinning hammer, just thought it would be unique to see even if it isn’t well executed.
Well, it was pretty cool, but I had trouble getting enough energy into the ball with a consistent shot. I abandoned it early May.