Precision guided disc golf launcher: noobs are now pros
Summary
TLDRIn this exhilarating video, the creator embarks on a quest to enhance his Disc Off skills by designing and building a unique disc launcher, affectionately termed a 'disc bazooka.' The ambitious project aims to achieve pinpoint accuracy and control over the disc's speed and spin, with the hope of rivaling professional players. The journey is fraught with trials, including grappling with the physics of disc flight, overcoming mechanical challenges, and refining the launcher's design through numerous iterations. The video documents the meticulous engineering process, from conceptualization and prototyping to the final testing phase. Along the way, the creator experiments with various wheel configurations, grapples with motor control issues, and implements innovative solutions to achieve the desired disc trajectory. The culmination of the project results in a device capable of launching discs at high speeds and with impressive accuracy, offering a thrilling demonstration of the power of engineering and innovation in the realm of disc sports.
Takeaways
- 🚀 The creator built a disc bazooka to improve his Disc Off skills, aiming for accuracy and control over the disc's speed and spin.
- ⚙️ The device was designed with multiple stages to incrementally increase the disc's speed, similar to a mechanical rail gun.
- 🤔 Initial tests revealed issues with grip and slippage, leading to destructive vibrations and the need for multiple rebuilds.
- 🔄 The final design included a system of wheels and rollers to grip and spin the disc, with modifications to prevent it from getting locked between wheels.
- 💡 A computer running Linux with a touchscreen was integrated to control the machine and allow for more precise adjustments.
- 🔋 The use of flywheels stored energy to deliver a large amount of power in a short time, overcoming the underpowered motors.
- 🛠️ The project required precise machining and careful balancing due to the high vibration levels and the number of parts involved.
- 🔩 The launcher was modular, designed for easy assembly and repair, with parts that could be 3D printed to simplify the process.
- 🔋 A complex electrical system was involved, with the challenge of managing high current draw from multiple motors.
- 🧠 Software was developed to control the motor speeds, using hall effect sensors to measure and adjust the rotation of each wheel.
- 🎯 Despite challenges, the final result was a machine capable of launching discs with high speed and spin, although it could only spin discs in one direction.
Q & A
What was the original purpose of the disc launcher?
-The original purpose of the disc launcher was to improve the user's skill at Disc Off by providing better accuracy in launching discs with controlled speed and spin.
What is Disc Off and how is it different from regular golf?
-Disc Off is a sport similar to regular golf, but instead of using a golf ball and a hole, players use a disc (frisbee) and a basket. The objective is to get the disc into the basket with the minimum number of throws.
Why did the creator decide to build a disc bazooka?
-The creator decided to build a disc bazooka to achieve greater accuracy and control over the speed and spin of the disc, with the hope of becoming as good as a professional player at Disc Off.
What was the main challenge faced during the development of the disc launcher?
-The main challenge was finding a way to grip the disc securely without causing it to bend or slip, while also ensuring that it could be launched with high speed and spin.
How did the creator address the issue of the disc not spinning properly?
-The creator redesigned the launcher to spread the wheels out, allowing the disc to touch no more than two wheels at any given time, which enabled the disc to spin freely without jamming.
What is the significance of the flywheel in the motor?
-The flywheel stores a significant amount of energy as it spins with the motor. It can deliver a large amount of energy in a very short time, which is crucial for the initial high-speed launch of the disc.
What safety measures were taken to prevent damage or accidents during the testing of the disc launcher?
-The creator used a knee stop mechanism to quickly halt the operation of the launcher if things went wrong, preventing further damage or potential accidents.
How did the creator ensure repeatability and consistency in the disc launcher's performance?
-The creator designed a mini launcher mechanism that holds the disc in a repeatable position and releases it straight with momentum when the computer is ready to fire, ensuring consistency in each launch.
What software and hardware components were used in the final design of the disc launcher?
-The final design included a computer running Linux with a touchscreen interface, 16 motor controllers with flywheels, and a software system to calculate and control the precise speed of each motor for accurate disc launch.
What was the maximum distance achieved with the disc launcher in the video?
-The maximum distance achieved with the disc launcher was approximately 450 feet at a speed of around 90 mph.
What future improvements does the creator plan to make to the disc launcher?
-The creator plans to add more sophisticated aiming and tracking systems to predict the flight of the discs more accurately and to improve the launcher's consistency and accuracy further.
Outlines
🚀 Introduction to the Disc Bazooka Project
The speaker introduces a project to create a 'disc bazooka' aimed at improving their skills in Disc Off, a sport similar to golf but using a frisbee-like disc and a basket instead of a ball and hole. The bazooka is designed for accuracy, with full control over the disc's speed and spin. The speaker also mentions the challenges faced in building the device, including its tendency to self-destruct and the need for numerous rebuilds.
🔧 Building and Testing the Disc Launcher
The speaker details the process of constructing the disc launcher, which uses a series of wheels to grip and launch the disc. They discuss the importance of grip and the need for a slippery surface to prevent slipping. The initial tests reveal that the discs do not spin and are unstable. To address this, the design is modified to allow the disc to spin freely. The speaker also talks about the power requirements, using flywheels to store energy for quick bursts of power.
💻 Integration and Software Control of the Launcher
The speaker describes the complexities of integrating all the components of the launcher and the software needed to control the precise speeds of the motors. They encounter issues with motor drivers and the need for accurate speed control. To solve this, they implement hall effect sensors to measure the speed of each wheel and adjust the motor control accordingly. This allows for precise control of the disc's speed and spin.
🎯 Outdoor Testing and Aiming Challenges
The speaker takes the launcher outdoors for testing and finds that it exceeds expectations, despite initial difficulties with aiming due to the disc's unpredictable flight path. They discuss the need for a system to track the discs and collect data to improve accuracy. The speaker also shares their personal learning habit of spending at least 30 minutes a day on self-improvement using an online platform called Brilliant.
🏌️♂️ Disc Off Skills and Future Improvements
The speaker reflects on the potential of the launcher to improve their Disc Off skills, even humorously considering it a form of cheating. They mention the plan to build a device to track discs in the future and the need for software to predict their flight paths. The video concludes with an exciting demonstration of the launcher's power, slicing a disc in half and emphasizing the importance of safety when operating such a device.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Disc Off
💡Disc Bazooka
💡Accuracy
💡Flywheel
💡Motor Controllers
💡Hall Effect Sensor
💡Slip
💡Vibration
💡Modular Design
💡Repeatability
💡Sunk Cost Fallacy
Highlights
The creation of a disc bazooka designed for accuracy in disc golf.
The bazooka has full control over the disc's speed and spin.
Aims to improve the user's disc golf skills to a professional level.
The bazooka is capable of shooting a disc faster than any human.
The project faced numerous trials and had to be rebuilt multiple times due to design flaws.
The importance of grip in launching discs at high speeds.
Innovative use of a Hot Wheel set as a prototype for the disc launcher mechanism.
The concept of a mechanical rail gun inspired the multi-stage acceleration of the disc.
Challenges in achieving consistent disc spin due to wheel contact.
Design of a modular sub-assembly system for easier assembly and repair.
Use of flywheels to store and deliver large amounts of energy in a short time.
Integration of a computer running Linux with a touchscreen for precision control.
Engineering solutions to overcome motor speed control issues using hall effect sensors.
Successful launch of discs with precise speed and spin, demonstrating the bazooka's potential.
The bazooka's ability to shoot discs over 450 ft at 90 mph.
The need for further development of aiming and tracking systems for improved accuracy.
Demonstration of the bazooka's power by shooting a machete in front of a disc.
The use of Brilliant.org for daily learning and skill development.
Transcripts
a few years ago I made this dis
launching Gauntlet it was supposed to
make me better at disc off but it just
kind of ended up being
dangerous I couldn't let that stand so I
made
[Music]
this it's basically a disc bazooka this
thing is designed for accuracy it has
full control over the speed and spin of
the disc and once we get sights on it it
should be able to snipe the basket and
I'm hoping it can make me as good as a
pro it's also insane L powerful it can
shoot a disc faster than any human so
we'll definitely be having some fun and
shooting it at stuff and yes that's a
sword I'm also going to show you the
trials and tribulations of getting this
thing working and you're in for a treat
because it was terrible it really wanted
to tear itself apart and it refused to
work in reality the way that theory said
it should so I had to rebuild and
rebuild and rebuild it has so many parts
now that I have this I think there might
be a simpler way to do it but is there a
cooler way I don't know this is pretty
cool if you're not familiar with this
golf it's very similar to real golf
except instead of getting a golf ball
into a hole you're trying to get a
frisbee into a basket the second most
important thing to know about Disc Off
is you never call it a frisbee it's a
disc frisbees are for babies discs are
for men and at the end of the day you're
trying to get the disc into the basket
with the minimum number of throws the
discs fly like little airplanes so any
variation in wind or how you launch them
can make them go to completely different
locations in fact I think it's
physically impossible to consistently
get hole in one so my goal is for this
to make me as good as a pro get to the
basket in a couple of throws and then
snipe it in to do this we need accuracy
which means launching discs with very
controlled speed and spin so with all
this in mind I went back to the drawing
board and came up with a completely new
design this is my kids Hot Wheel set
it's a so my general idea specifically
this little box down here has two wheels
that rotate in opposite
directions and if we push a car into it
it launches it super fast this should
work with a disc as well this is a mini
little fake Disc Off disc watch what
happens if we shove it into the
wheels oh wow no
way oh so close what's really cool is
you can make it spin
by making one of the wheels go faster
than the other but there is a problem
there's a limit to how fast you can make
a car or a disc go with this kind of
setup let me show you what I
[Music]
mean I've modified the Hot Wheel track
to take this die
grinder before it was launching cars at
maybe 10 m hour on paper this should
give us closer to 40 what do you think
is going to happen
[Music]
pretty much the same speed here it is in
slow motion do you see the
problem the launcher wheels are just
slipping the same thing happens when a
car does a burnout it doesn't matter how
powerful your engine is if you ain't got
the grip it's just going to slip but
imagine if I took 10 of these launchers
and put them in a row the first one
would get the car going fast the second
one faster and on and on and on it's
basically a mechanical rail gun so if we
did this and precisely controlled the
velocity of all the wheels we could
launch a disc with whatever speed and
spin that we want all right let's get it
made the hardest part of this project is
going to be how do I grip the disc I
want to put a ton of force into it but
it's really hard to do that so this is
the simplest possible Arrangement that I
could build that will let me try
different kinds of Wheels gripping the
disc so we're going to just shoot the
disc out see what happens go from there
so do you think it's going to work here
we go
[Applause]
I probably should have put a little bit
more effort into it this is a great
example of how destructive vibrations
can be I'm going to have to be really
careful with
this well I'm glad I put the minimum
effort into this thing because it
stinks remember how I made a big deal
about slip yeah if you look closely
you'll see the disc bending when it goes
between the wheels this means I can't
squeeze the disc any harder because
it'll just bend more every time I launch
a disc you can just smell burning rubber
burning plastic so we're slipping we
really need a better way to grip these
discs the direction I was going in is
trying to grip the end of the disc with
a V kind of like a v- belt pulley but
thinking it through it seemed really
hard to do practically but then I was
thinking well if we put the wheels on
top and bottom that's kind of like a vwh
with these I can squeeze pretty much as
hard as I want so I can generate an
enormous amount of friction we'd still
put a set on each side of the disc so we
can make it spin but we don't actually
need a tire on the bottom we just need
something slippery to squeeze
against before we can make the whole
thing I need to test it I need to see
how much grip we can get and see if it
can actually
work these rollers are the slippery
surface we're going to push the disc
against I really like how the wheels are
folded on top they push the disc through
and by driving them different speeds we
can still make it spin so hopefully this
will suck the disc in and spit it out
like it tastes terrible let's
see pretty clear the discs just aren't
getting any spin they're coming just
straight out which makes them very
unstable we need the disc to spin so it
acts like a gyroscope and resist turning
over the wheels driving at different
speeds should be able to spin the disc
but when the disc goes between two sets
of Wheels it's touching four wheels at
the same time and it can't spin it gets
totally locked you can see how much the
tires are rubbing on the disc when this
happens I think what I need to do is
spread these wheels out so that the disc
isn't touching more than two wheels at
any given time so we're going to
redesign and remake a bunch of these
parts to stretch it out like a limo and
see if we can get that to work it's
pretty much the same thing just slightly
different like twins there's enough
space between the wheels for the disc to
spin freely without jamming up really
not a lot to see for so much work but
hopefully it'll make all the difference
so let's find
out okay that is totally spinning it's
not perfectly stable but it's way better
and we should get more spin with more
stages based on the speeds I'm getting
out of the test stand I think I need six
stages but I'm going to make eight just
to be safe the wheels are really hard so
I'm going to get them done
first this was harder to make than I
expected vibration is a huge problem so
everything had to be machined extremely
accurately and even after all that
effort everything had to be carefully
balanced I spent a lot of time designing
them to be easy to assemble because
there's so many of them which really
saved my bacon because I ended up
rebuilding these things so many
times there's a really important detail
that I've been glossing over which is
how much power we need out of the motors
and if you do the math you actually need
basically this motor inside of every
single wheel and this is the motor that
I'm using it is a little bit
underpowered every motor will have a
chunk of Steel attached to it that looks
like this it's called a flywheel this
will spin up with the motor and store a
ton of energy think of a car that's
moving fast or a cannonball once it's
going to stop it you have to take all
that energy out the neat thing about a
flywheel is it can deliver an enormous
amount of energy in a very short amount
of time kind of like a car hitting a
wall it's pretty amazing but this little
piece of Steel can deliver as much power
as this motor for a couple milliseconds
but that's all we
need the rest of the machine is really
similar to the previous ones there's
just a lot more of everything I've
actually had this idea for 2 years but I
was waiting until I got the water jet
because I knew there was going to be a
lot of parts like this trying to machine
all these in another way would be such a
nightmare
thankfully a bunch of the parts could be
3D printed because there are so many
parts I designed the whole thing to be
three modular sub assemblies that
combine together like a Transformer to
make a mighty launcher this makes it a
lot easier to assemble and if I destroy
something it's a lot easier to repair do
you remember those 5ft subs from
elementary school they'd bring to
parties that's basically what this is
the biggest change is this thing I don't
love having a long thing hanging off the
back of my disc launcher but I think
it's really important we want the disc
to come out very repeatably which means
we need to put the disc in very
repeatably you can imagine if it was
angled up or down it'll bounce through
the system and come out differently this
is kind of like a mini launcher that
back and it holds the disc and
then when the computer's ready to fire
it'll release it and push it nice and
straight with some momentum right into
the launcher the disc is held back with
a trigger mechanism which is really
important for releasing the disc when
everything is going exactly the right
speed and getting consistency it also
has handles for picking it up like this
it's not that heavy and then
electrically there's just basically 16
of everything which was painful and
expensive and of course there's knee
stop because if things go wrong you want
to make them stop going wrong fast
although there is a big problem if I
turn all the motors on at the same time
they're going to be pulling an enormous
amount of current trying to spin up
their fly wheeels and it's going to be
like 400 amps which will just melt
everything the battery will explode
it'll probably start a really foul
smelling fire so I have to do a little
more complicated thing where I spin them
up kind of one at a time and that should
limit the current to something more
manageable and then it also has a
computer running Linux with a
touchscreen which might seem Overkill
but I'm planning to add a lot more
smarts into this later this is going to
give me an interface to make me way more
accurate the last thing we need is some
software that'll calculate how these
motors all need to spin to make the disc
go the way that we want it to and
there's a lot of different strategies to
do this the most obvious way would be to
evenly split the acceleration between
all the wheels but this doesn't really
work because physics the amount of
energy it takes to make something go
from 0 to 30 mph is the same to go from
85 to 90 mph you might remember the
whole 1 12 MV squared thing this is that
which counter intuitively means I need
each stage to speed the disc up less and
less but this should actually evenly
spread the load and give me the maximum
amount of grip and that's pretty much it
it's simultaneously not that bad but
also kind of complicated I think it
should work but there's really only one
way to find out so here we
go here we
[Music]
go all aboard next stop integration hell
when you put all the pieces together it
never works I started off Strong by
blowing up half the motor drivers but
even worse it's throwing discs even
worse than
me I thought we fixed this I see a lot
of problems the first is the disc doing
this it's not supposed to swim like a
whale it looks like the disc's able to
dip down between the rollers and then it
pops up and then develops a really bad
oscillation basically a bucking bronco
[Music]
so I'm going to try to put a guide right
down the middle and that'll hopefully
stop it so let's
see oh yeah that was way
better the guide rails totally work but
there's another really big problem that
I really don't want to solve if you look
at the disc closely it's not really
spinning we to shoot it far it's just
going to flip over and slam into the
ground ask me how I know I think this is
because I don't have good control over
the speeds that the different Motors go
if they're going the wrong speed the
disc is just going to do random stuff
and this is happening because I'm using
cheap motor controllers that have very
bad speed control if I tell them all to
go the same speed they all go different
speeds we could either buy thousands of
dollars worth of nice motor
controllers or we could do some really
annoying engineering that I don't want
to
do all right so I've been doing some
engineering and this is what I came up
with what I'm going to try to do is
measure how fast each wheel is rotating
using one of these this is called a hall
effect sensor and it detects a magnetic
field so I have one set up right here
wire to this light and if I bring a
magnet near it it will detect it and
turn this light on if we strategically
place a magnet on each wheel and put a
hall effect sensor nearby it we will see
that magnet every time it spins by so
now if the motor controller is going the
wrong speed we can quantify how wrong it
is and compare it to the speed we want
it to go and adjust the speed we're
telling the motor controller to go until
the speed it's actually doing matches
what we want we have to install and wire
in 16 of these because they're 16 of
everything this is getting ridiculous so
the hall effect sensors work but it
still doesn't work because these
motor so watch what happens when I try
to go 1,000 RPM which is a very
important RPM for me to be able to
[Music]
go the motor drivers will not go below
2500 rpm so I think the right thing to
do would be to get motor drivers that
can go the speed that I want but we're
in pretty deep now so I think it's time
to go full sunk cost fallacy and just
try to fix this in software so here's my
plan if I want a motor to be going slow
when I fire I can just turn it off
before I fire and let it slow down and
right when it hits the right speed boom
you're fired but It's Tricky with
multiple motors going different speeds
because they need different times to
slow down but I can have the computer
calculate when to turn each motor off so
they all reach the right speed at the
same time and when that happens you're
fired and when it works it looks like
this you have all the motors going a
precise speed to make the disc do what
we want and it's so cool
my wife is here to see what I've been up
to what do you think looks been
complicated I thought this was going to
be easy no I think that I know but I
really thought it like it's always think
that it's a bunch of Wheels how hard
could it be you know there's nothing to
it turns out there was something to it
you want to press the buttons you see
what this thing does oh thanks are you
sure yeah you don't want to fire it no
how do you not want to fire it I want to
see what happens you got to admit pretty
cool yeah you look totally normal take
it on over to the old disc golf course
see what happens you look like a vendor
selling uh Wheels instead of hot dogs at
a game
popcorn get your
popcorn all right so you ready to see