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We designed a similar idea for our Heavyweight which gives us a fast spin up time due to the dual stage flywheel. We had plans for a flipper onteh front powered by the flywheel, but weight run out and we canned the idea. My team mate is now building a featherweight/lightweight using a vert flywheel to store energy for a flipper.
The only problem I see with the Whyachi bot is that it seems to stall the flywheel when the flipper fires.
...which at least confirms that its the spinner energy which is being used for the flipper (rather than a secondary CO2 cylinder like, IIRC, ROTAS).
Interesting, but it puts a lot of force on whichever mechanism is responsible for converting the spin to a flip. Wasnt the theory that you can store more energy in CO2 than in batteries anyway?
Still, itll be interesting to see it run. Its certainly one way to give your flipper some defence...
Ive just been looking at replys from Terry Ewert of Team Whyachi and he comments that variants of this bot have been on the Whyachi drawing board for a while. And that its first design ideas started out as HPA, then hydraulic, then steam. They even looked at some sort of disc shooter/coil gun methods which I dont know how they would of worked. Until they finally settled on a spinning-kinetic-flipper. Terry also commented that most people are aware that there is much more power density in NiMh cells than an pneumatic tank, its just getting a case of activating a quick powerful flipper with it so alternatively they developed a 2.5 thick 4140 flywheel which is 24 dia by 4 high and is supposed to spin at 1000rpm but they have been having problems with drag on the perimeter bearing.
Heres how Terry tried to explain how the flipper mechanism works. quote:
There is a land machined on the top of the ring. This land rings center is offset from the main ring center, which gives the stroke. There is a top link that pulls the flipper plate up which engages with the spinning land when firing. Once the engagement link does its job, a ramp pushes it back up to the re-cocked position if the flywheel is still spinning with enough energy. Well i hope you got that because there is still alot of us Uk and USA builders that havent a clue what he is trying to explain which might be aided by some pictures but apparently he only took that one picture on the site before the bot was shipped to the Uk for the now cancelled FRA Championships, once he gets it back we will have some more photos (yay!) and probably a better explanation.
Well as some of you may know if you read the American RFL forum, a massive event called Robotic Revolution in New Orleans has recently taken place, videos and event reports are just starting to come thorough and there is one video in particular at the moment that displays how effective Warriors spinning-kinetic-flipper is for those of you who are still interested. Also its worth mentioning that I believe Warrior is in the 220lb weight class so its no lightweight....
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