Hi! This is my first thread on Vex. Anyway, I have built a ping pong shooting robot very much like the Vex Triplet that was built for Radio Shack. Everything is working fine except the actual shooting mechanism. I have had to use an alternate shooting method because the motor isn’t fast enough, so I am using two rubber bands attached to a metal cam. It doesn’t shoot very far (only 2 feet). What suggestions do you have that will shoot ping pong balls further? Thanks for the help.
Post some pictures.
Yes, please post some pictures first then we can give you a deffinite solution. But some ideas you may want to consider are experimenting with gear ratios, maybe use a powerful spring, maybe ahave a rotating arm with a ping pong paddle hit the balls, or any other things you can think of.
I’d use a piece of flexible metal. It can then be pulled down by the motor and released. Thats how I built my version a while back. (gear the shooting part with more torque to help pull back the metal)
i just used rubber bands when i made mine. and i think the VEXlabs triplet bot used the rubber links to make the spring mechanism.
rubber bands work, but not continuously
Yeah sorry i forgot to post some pictures. Here they are.
The forum wont let me post more than 100 kb so i have to do multiple posts 
Pic 2!!!
Pic 3!!!
Picture 4!!!1
Picture 5!!!
Last picture is on the intake rollers. I hope these are enough to show what it looks like. Basically i have the motor spin a piece of metal that pulls down the metal, and when the motor finishes rotating it flips the piece back up hitting the ball. I have tried variations of this and have even tried moving the ball up and down. Any other suggestions? Thanks for the responses. 
Would you mind deleting those posts and combining them into one? Posting continuously like that clogs the thread and makes it less readable
It looks neat though! Good job 
I tried to put it all into one post, but it wouldn’t let me attach more than 100kb, and each picture was at least 70kb. I didn’t know any other way to post all of the pictures. Sorry.
Try uploading them to imageshack and posting links to the pictures.
As for pictures upload them to the gallery next time.
For the robot about the only thing I can think of is using more rubber bands. The only other thing would be to completely redesign it to use a spring or something else.
Okay I have learned my lesson. Next time I will upload it to the gallery. As far as my robot goes, i have gotten it to shoot the ping pong ball a good 10 to 15 feet using a motor to bend back and release a plastic spoon. I got this idea off a video I saw on the internet. Thank you all for all your help and suggestions!!!
I built one of these as soon as I got my kit. Mine could shoot it a good 15’ or more depending on how tight you got the rubber bands.
this is how i got it to launch them
and this is what it looked like.
and this is what it looked like.
Great Job!!! I like the Animated GIF…