Prototyping

Shooter

Define

• • Able to shoot into the hub from any position in our zone

  • Able to adjust hood angle to vary shot trajectory

  • Able to shoot balls across the full field

  • Able to sustain a high BPS, as we are a single shooter.

Concept

Our first shooter was based on 6328 Mechanical Advantage's shooter, which they had built in the offseason and showed great sucess putting fuel through. They graciously shared their CAD link in their 2026 Open Alliance thread, which was used to create our prototype. I was not involved in the CAD--that task was primarily taken up by Rodin.

Implementation

Fully assembled, the shooter has two motors: one for the main flywheel, and one for the hood. The purpose of this is to allow for varying amounts of backspin to be applied.

Test and Iterate

One of the first values we tested for was recovery time. A shooter that cannot recover fast also probably cannot sustain the high BPS that we want to push through the shooter. Using Phoenix Tuner, we can plot velocity and see how long the shooter takes to recover after a velocity drop.

We also attempted to vary the angle of the shooter to see how it affected our shot, effectively testing out the "hood" capabilities..

As the above videos show, a lower angle leads to a lower arc, as expected. From this testing, we determined that we would need a roughly 50-80º elevation range for our hood.

We soon noticed the blue compliant wheels were compressing too much onto the balls, leading to blue marks and gashes. This also likely led to inefficiency in the shooter, as more comprssion leads to a greater velocity drop. Therefore, we switched to green wheels. These have a lower durometer and therefore less compliance.

Results looked so much better:

Kicker

Define

• • Can feed balls with initial velocity into shooter

  • Balls spend minimal time in kicker.

Concept

Implementation

Test and Iterate

Intake

Define

Concept

Implementation

Test and Iterate