2022 Day 19: Launcher Testing

 Launcher Testing

We filmed a good amount of prototype launcher testing today on the replica Upper Hub with an agitator wheel installed (it wasn't turned on for all the testing, it's loud, and we didn't notice a difference in much of the testing off or on). We tried to film as much unedited testing as possible, so there are a lot of clips. Hopefully, this will give people an idea of how the balls interact with the goals.

Ball Pressure
In these clips, two of the balls are from kickoff, and early on, they were underinflated. The rest of the balls are brand new and were inflated today using our digital inflator. We received our official spec gauges today as well, and it seems the digital inflator reads about 1 psi lower than the official analog gauges specified in the manual. Hence, some of our balls were at 3.5psi based on the digital inflator, and some were at 3.5 psi based on the official analog gauge by the end of the testing. 

Prototype launcher configuration

• Falcon is basically 1:1 (actually 47:46 cause belt math is hard sometimes),
• 4" stealth wheel main flywheel
• 2" compliant wheels on the top roller are 1:1, so it's about half the surface speed of the main roller
• 2" compliant wheels on the accelerator wheel under the main roller, also 1:1.

More Videos can be found in our Week 3 Gallery.