I built a flywheel launcher that was derived from the one in this video:
My launcher was built off of this design and is functionally identical to the one in the video. Same dual double 5-in flywheels, same 2 turbo-geared motors, same gear ratio, same spacing, etc. The launcher in the video is able to shoot a ball full-court into the High Goal. The problems with my launcher though are:
-Motors are prone to overheating and stalling out (which is the last thing I want to happen with my robot on the field).
-Only able to land balls into the high goal from a range of 6 feet, 8 inches (mid-field).
I clocked the flywheels (by means of a shaft encoder) spinning at over 1000 RPM.
I want the launcher to be able to shoot into the High Goal reliably from the starting tiles. Anyone have any thoughts on how to improve this design?
The build quality is either substantially worse on your robot or you have way too much compression. Just as a general rule I find that teams that copy something don’t understand why things work and thus build significantly worse versions of the robots they copy. Could you post close up pictures so anyone that does understand can try to help?
Indeed, I selected this design because of its simplicity (my previous robot was a grabber and I have like 3 weeks to my competition date.) and the effectiveness it demostrated in the video. The thing here is that my launcher isn’t shooting as far as the video shows, so there has to be something in the video I’m missing here, and I want to find out what that is. That’s why I’m asking you guys, to help me out. Plus, I’m not planning on copying other robots’ elements for other elements of my robot, like the drivetrain.
As to the pictures, my robot is locked up at my school team’s warehouse. I forgot to take pictures on the way out of the warehouse after the last build session. It’ll be Monday afternoon at the earliest when I get them online.