Hi! This is a video of a design for a launcher that I built. This video is mainly for rookie teams with very little experience. Mind that this is a very crude design, that only took me ten minutes to build. This is nothing like our current CAD design (I don’t want to give to many ideas away). Also, this slip gear pulls back way too far,
Also, sorry for filming vertically. I know that makes it harder to see, but I was in an awkward position. Please do not comment anything about that.
Have you tried it with an actual star? How far does it throw?
It launches a homemade star, (.4 lbs, so not accurate), 7 feet. But understand that this isn’t the actual gear ratio being used.
How many motors does it use?
Hmmm, this looks pretty good. I wonder what it could do with a bit more power. How many motors do you currently have on it?
Currently, I am only running this on one motor, geared for torque.
That seems promising. I was planning on using 4 motors for a launcher.
We were planning on allocating 5. I’ll still have to wait to test this my self though
I agree, I need to utilize more motors. This was just a test to explain the logistics of a slip gear launcher, and if it could even launch a star.
I wonder what motor layouts are going to look like this year. It seems like there wont be more than 2 motors needed for a launcher since stars don’t need to be shot at a fire rate faster than 2 seconds per shot, and there wont be more than 6 motors needed on a chassis since it wont have to push any opposing robots.
You could use a 60t slip gear with multiple slips. That wouldn’t pull it back as far, and it would be faster if you used the right ratio.
Hello, I just wanted to clear up a few things. I have seen some people using this prototype as an example of a decent launcher, but this was just a very quick build. While I said that this was able to shoot the star 7 feet, (and this is true), it was extremely slow, as I had to use a massive amount of rubber bands, while also gearing the slipper for torque (sorry, I don’t have a picture of the torqued slipper, as I have already taken it apart). I feel like beginner teams could use this as a base to build their catapult, but experiment with a variety of internal motor gearings, external gearings, number of motors, and number of rubber bands to find what is best for you.
I’m curious to see how this does with actual stars. My concern with catapults is loading.
Unfortunately, I took it apart before my stars had arrived, but I am currently in the process of building a much better, much more accurate launcher, which I will be able to test with actual stars very soon.
I look forward to seeing how it works
Thanks!