So, dumpers and walls to prevent said dumpers are most likely going to be prevalent in the scene for this year’s game(starstruck). Now, to get past the walls, many teams are considering launchers, but I haven’t seen an efficient design. Any Ideas?
I felt like I should ask this mostly because of the odd & differing shapes of this year’s objects.
I don’t think “dumpers” are particularly practical due to the large size of the scoring objects. I think many teams are not just building launchers in response to the threat of walls being built (which I also don’t think are practical), but simply because they think they would be most efficient at getting the stars or cubes over the fence.
But keep in mind launchers do require either pneumatics which may run out of air, or motors which may not be efficient enough
Don’t you know everyone is going to have single-flywheels 
No its about those catapults and punchers (which might work in this game)
I dont know if anyone has found an efficient way to do catapults for this yet tho other than slip gears and variable pneumatic pullback mechanisms with nylon string which could pose a major problem. Im betting that within 2 months a fundamentally different design or catapult will have surfaced
The choo choo mechanism was popular in FRC. Wingus and Dingus did one in vex that you can find on youtube.
Teams may decide to experiment with slingshots as it is something to try that is a little bit of catapult and puncher.
It’d be real crazy if someone devised a way to shoot with a single flywheel
We are prototyping a special slipgear catapult that uses a ratcheting system right now.
I’m gonna experiment with a double flywheel that serves as an intake. Won’t be accurate, but will be fast.
You know I would like to see someone build a kicking bot. Two walls on the side and a pendulum in between it that kicks the stars over the goal. Probably won’t be very effective but it would be interesting.
My team came up with an idea, and we might implement it eventually on one of our robots. I’m not sure if I want to try a catapult because my team never experimented with it in NbN or the modified flywheel design we developed because we used it in NbN all year. We will probably end up doing both on different robots, but that won’t be for a while.
The biggest problem I might see with a flywheel is the hood. Unless you have a very specific and controlled indexer that can also align the stars correctly with a double flywheel, I can’t visualize any way to effectively get the same amount of compression at different orientations.
I’m sure somebody with enough NbN experience could rig something up after a lot of effort, but coming from a team that used a LP to considerable success last season, I think just mixing and matching a few things will be the key to a good launcher.
I made a design for a variable linear puncher this year, that gearbox can be very easily incorporated into a catapult. And no, it does not use a slip gear.
My team tried a kicking bot for NBN. Once the velocity is up it shot the balls really far and fast. It wasn’t practical though because the impacts threw it out of balance and it would oscillate itself into pieces. It was also extremely dangerous because the arm needed to be rather long to maintain its speed after each impact(3rd class lever). Imagine a lawn mower blade spinning.
My current launcher concept is a tray catapult. Essentially, it will be a wide flat panel with small edges that will contain several scoring objects. I plan on using a large slip gear to fire and reload the catapult.
I dont know if anybody has seen this yet but I think it is almost the exact thing I want to do, except with forklift prongs instead of a scoop.
Really amazing idea! In my opinion, that would be one of the best builds if you can make it happen.
I think this entire conversation is irrelevant because I believe shooters are unnecessary.