Hello people of the forums…
We mounted our launcher today, and during tests we noticed that the disc was curving to the left a lot. Manageable by the driver, but not ideal. (In the picture you can see the trajectory) What could we do to combat/fix this? We cannot add a second wheel, so adding that to combat the spin is not an option.
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We had that issue too, it looks like you have too much compression and its causing the disk to go to the left.
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try reducing the length of the wall adjacent to the flywheel. (the wall that the disc pushes against while going through the flywheel).
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If it’s a compression issue as 16688B_Oregon has said, try giving the disk more space between the wall and flywheel.
The curve is caused by the spin your flywheel puts on the disc. The grip mesh you have on the wall opposite your flywheel increases the spin, which increases the curve. Ideally you want zero spin on your launcher (one of the reasons why catapults excel) so having the least grip possible on the wall opposite your shooter is the goal. We found that using frosted polycarb works great but flat vex metal does the job just fine.
Okay. I’ll remove the anti-slip mat thing and figure out the spacing.
Putting a spin on the disc will not kick it to the side, it will make it fly stably.
The grip mesh might be kicking it to the side, but mostly the opposing wall is too long.
If the disc kicks to the side of the flywheel, shorten the opposing side.
If the disc kicks away from the flywheel, lengthen the opposing wall.
I agree though, frosted poly or just metal works best, don’t use grip mesh.
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alright. I’ll work something out.
The only way I can think of is that the compression is too high and it ends up bouncing off of the wall. Make the wall shorter and maybe a tiny bit thinner, and it should be a lot less diagonal.
The disc is spinning counter clockwise and is driving the disc to the left, which is evident in the direction the flywheel is spinning and the direction the disc is moving. We used to have a curved flywheel and the disc drift was significantly worse than using our straight flywheel because of this same principle. Both disc spin and wall length affect this.
We switched out the anti slip for a plate and it works great. Thanks everyone!
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