Kicker Team

[Tanner]

What did ya'll come up with? Or rather deduct?

I heard Sunny had about 2-4 ideas...

-Tanner

[Sunny]

What did ya'll come up with? Or rather deduct?

I heard Sunny had about 2-4 ideas...

-Tanner

Well, part of it was smack against Logan

The other parts of this are that we have a lot of room for "testing." And we have many variations of one design.

For example, the metal kicker that I put together uses pneumatic tubing at the top. While the kick isn't that powerful, I'd say roughly 25 feet, it gets decent enough air. One thing to help with that is to lower the Point of Rotation.

If we were to use Mr. Smith's Kicker, we'd have to get the leverage because we ran a test today that if we move the contact point of the tubing closer to the point of rotation, the kicker is HORRIBLE. Like, 3-4 feet of range, and maybe 7" off the ground.

Another thing with Mr. Smith's kicker is that the central idea behind it is key. With a longer leverage arm and the tubing stretching out farther, it does get more tension. Ultimately this does mean that ultimately that we can fabricate a kicker to run surgical tubing along the sides.

There are a number of options/setups we can go with.

On Saturday, the transmission will be "done", and we should have a fully automated cocking/releasing mechanism for all kicking prototypes. Depending on how far the frames are, we can then start molding the kickers to the different frame ideas. For example, for Tanner's chassis (sorry to shift to third person) the kicker needs to fold into the frame, which is a key component for going over the bump, while for Logan's chassis, we have more room to work with, but we have to keep in mind that the support bars might interfere with the kicker.

There are MULTIPLE options of how to mount the tubbing and where to place the winch, and come Saturday, we'll pick the one that best adheres to each chassis design.

EDIT: We're also going to need to put the roller on the front of each chassis, and I think that depending on my calculation sheet, which I think Tanner still has, the roller will need to be roughly 8" off the ground in order to keep the ball properly "in" at 3".

[Tanner]

If we were to use Mr. Smith's Kicker, we'd have to get the leverage because we ran a test today that if we move the contact point of the tubing closer to the point of rotation, the kicker is HORRIBLE. Like, 3-4 feet of range, and maybe 7" off the ground.

Well, thats just a simple realization of Torque. tau = Fr.

Another thing with Mr. Smith's kicker is that the central idea behind it is key. With a longer leverage arm and the tubing stretching out farther, it does get more tension. Ultimately this does mean that ultimately that we can fabricate a kicker to run surgical tubing along the sides.

Run the tubing along the sides? I don't follow.

It sounds like ya'll made some good progress. Nice to be actually like building, then ideas get realized a bit quicker and stuff.

EDIT: We're also going to need to put the roller on the front of each chassis, and I think that depending on my calculation sheet, which I think Tanner still has, the roller will need to be roughly 8" off the ground in order to keep the ball properly "in" at 3".

Not sure where I put that... *looks*

-Tanner

[Sunny]

Well, thats just a simple realization of Torque. tau = Fr.

Yeah, but I thought that if we make the tubing tighter, it would help, but it really didn't.

Run the tubing along the sides? I don't follow.

My main worry was that with tubing running down to the end of the chassis, we won't have room for anything. One thing that Mr. Smith said, that I was stupid not to realize, was that with a small kicker, the leverage bar at the top can be wider, and essentially we can the tubing run down the sides of the robot, which is kinda like the area above the wheels/sprockets area.

[Tanner]

My main worry was that with tubing running down to the end of the chassis, we won't have room for anything. One thing that Mr. Smith said, that I was stupid not to realize, was that with a small kicker, the leverage bar at the top can be wider, and essentially we can the tubing run down the sides of the robot, which is kinda like the area above the wheels/sprockets area.

Leverage bar at the top? Ya'll must have rearranged stuff. Guess I can ask you tomorrow about that.

-Tanner

[Sunny]

UPDATE

Some of you might have seen that we working with pneumatics today. Others of you might have realized that the pneumatics don't work well by themselves. They need to be put on an actual kicker to be effective. We tested various setups with various stroke lengths and the overall result was mildly good.

Pros -
- The kick is quick. We can kick and pull back in a fraction of a second
- We won't need a transmission to cock back and release
- We can incorporate a hybrid of surgical tubing and the piston.

Cons -
- Weight. We need to carry 4 storage tanks, the cylinder, and the compressor.
- The kick has "ump" but it doesn't seem to have enough "ump" as the regular tubing.
- Pull back is an issue. We can mod this to Logan's chassis, but we're finding it EXTREMELY difficult to fit the pneumatic setup onto Tanner's design.

In the coming week, the frames will start to wrap up, which means that we will begin our official work. Each robot will have a roller (the skinny unobtainium) at the front, and the kicker altered to fit its design. For both, I recommend the shifter with the tubing, but we'll have to test the shifter before we can confirm on a specific kicker for each design.

[Logan]

DId we only test one new piston?

Did we putting more surgical tubing in addition to the piston?

Sorry, was a bit busy today.

[Sunny]

DId we only test one new piston?

Did we putting more surgical tubing in addition to the piston?

Sorry, was a bit busy today.

No worries, we were all busy.

We tested the piston with the 4" throw and the 6" throw. The 4" throw is better suited for Logan's Chassis while we used the 6" throw to try and see if we can mod something onto Tanner's Chassis.

We added surgical tubing onto the setup with the 4" throw and effectively created a hybrid. The kick was decent and we got it over 2 bumps, but I think it still lacked the "umph." When we tried to attach the tubing to the 6" cylinder, the cylinder wouldn't cock back, but without the tubing the kick was "average."

[demeht]

We added surgical tubing onto the setup with the 4" throw and effectively created a hybrid. The kick was decent and we got it over 2 bumps, but I think it still lacked the "umph." When we tried to attach the tubing to the 6" cylinder, the cylinder wouldn't cock back, but without the tubing the kick was "average."

What's this "umph" you're looking for? Getting it over two bumps seems powerful.

[Sunny]

What's this "umph" you're looking for? Getting it over two bumps seems powerful.

umph - a feeling that you get when you feel something has delivered a legitimate force.

I don't know, I just feel like compared to the only tubing set up, the pneumatic system is getting less "umph" than the only tubing setups.