Dale's Homemade Robots

Omega Force 1.0 Rotary Flipper

The rotary flipper is powered by a small brushless motor with flywheel assist. Flywheel is 1.6 inches in diameter and weighs 2 oz. At 35000 rpm it stores 150 joules of energy.

6.66:1 gear box reduces the 35000 rpm motor speed to 5255 rpm.

Hose clamp is used as an adjustable slip clutch

Final gear ratio of 8.667:1 turns the rotor at about 600 rpm. The linear speed of the "kicker" is 16 feet/sec or 10.9 miles/hour. This is pretty safe since nothing it hits can go any faster than 10.9 mph.

Adjusting the tension on the hose clamp sets the maximum force to a safe value

Flipper fully assembled and attached to Omegaforce for testing. The small wood wedge will be aluminum in the finished model. Click here to watch a short video of the flipper being tested for the first time. (RealPlayer format, 618K)

Note: This flipper design never saw combat.  It had issues.   A much improved version that actually works can be seen here.