Pivoting Shooter For FRC robotics Team

Overview

In the 2024 FRC game, a key aspect consisted of scoring soft foam rings into a large upper goal and a vertical lower goal. As an offseason project to get new team members familiar with machining, I designed a low backlash pivoting shooter to score in both locations with a single mechanism. With its four redundant beam break sensors, the foam ring can be properly staged into the shooter and aimed at the target via the robot's vision targeting system. The pivot itself was machined from billet aluminum on a HAAS VF4ss and featured a dual #25 chain drive, an encoder for absolute positioning, and keyed mounting features that interacted with the single piece shooter plate. Tolerance stack up was carefully analyzed to ensure unnoticeable backlash in the axial and radial directions. FEA was performed to optimize lightening patterns around the hard stop to ensure part lifespan through unintentional abusive motion.