Kicker

[Tanner]

Here's a video of some kicker stuff. I'd upload the really nice HD version, but it's big and I'm not sharing this on YouTube.

Having it all together reminds me of how nice a beat it kinda makes.

-Tanner

[Sunny]

Hardly "slow motion", but I guess relative to how fast it really is going, that's slow.

[Tanner]

Hardly "slow motion", but I guess relative to how fast it really is going, that's slow.

Eh, before I slowed them down, but then found it more fun to look at it frame by frame.

-Tanner

[freds]

Sunny
Kapp and I made some modifications to the kicker, but not real happy with the kicking effort.

We added a bar across the front for some toes that is adjustable up and down. We have it aligned to hit the ball at a contact point about where we had it before, like 2-3 inches off the ground.

We also repositioned the tubing in an attempt to get more down pull vs the existing position leaving about an inch of more pull. I think this caused us to lose some power.

This was all tested with the new kicker automation working. It could be that we tested manually with despooling the rope vs now, the tubing despooling the rope during the kick.

I want to reposition the toes to hit the ball at the lowest point we can. A kicker never kicks the ball up 3 inches.

Also, I want to put the tubing back like we had it, almost. I want two pairs on each side. I think this will give us more power. Remember on over/underdrive we had like 5 or 6.

I would also like a single loop on the kicker and then use the plates like Kapp and I installed to adust the tension.

I hope to make it by 2:30pm on Tuesday. Fred

[Sunny]

Sunny
Kapp and I made some modifications to the kicker, but not real happy with the kicking effort.

We added a bar across the front for some toes that is adjustable up and down. We have it aligned to hit the ball at a contact point about where we had it before, like 2-3 inches off the ground.

We also repositioned the tubing in an attempt to get more down pull vs the existing position leaving about an inch of more pull. I think this caused us to lose some power.

This was all tested with the new kicker automation working. It could be that we tested manually with despooling the rope vs now, the tubing despooling the rope during the kick.

I want to reposition the toes to hit the ball at the lowest point we can. A kicker never kicks the ball up 3 inches.

Also, I want to put the tubing back like we had it, almost. I want two pairs on each side. I think this will give us more power. Remember on over/underdrive we had like 5 or 6.

I would also like a single loop on the kicker and then use the plates like Kapp and I installed to adust the tension.

I hope to make it by 2:30pm on Tuesday. Fred

All of your chages sound legit, but I'll have to take a closer look to see exactly where there might be a loss of power.

Doubling up on the bands will indeed double our power. Earlier, by looping it, we were only raising the force by a fractional amount.

Does anyone know if we have the tubing from '08? Lots of teams seem to be using the beige tubing, but not the coarse one that we have.

[freds]

Sunny, the mods with the toes, Patrick, seem to make a great improvement. We need to fix the clearance problem.

Perhaps we should use short toes and still get the same kick. This gets back to your triangled toes or shorter L-toes

[Max]

We should add this kicker to our robot.

http://www.worldcupblog.org/world-cup-2010/the-robot-that-can-strike-a-football-at-200-kilometers-per-hour.html