Hello, where do you get kicker from? Do you buy it or do you make it?
Hi @Ducky!
You may either buy or make your kicker as long as it adheres to all other rules (especially strength). Many teams used commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts like solenoids as their kicker.
You can find out what other teams have been using at this Github repository of awesome RCJ soccer resources!
Hi @Ducky,
definitely look at what previous teams did (many of their posters are available on the awesome-list @Mike linked to, some even have websites) but also expect some changes to Open League - none of the following applies to LWL at the moment.
In the 2023 rules the kicker strength limit has been increased significantly for Open League while LWL retains the current limit due to durability concerns with the electronic balls (there used to be no limits at all and some kickers broke balls in half sometimes or would punch holes in the shell if the paddle on the front of the solenoid rod wasn’t in place to spread the load, 400V capacitor banks used to be common and none of that was sustainable for safety and durability reasons; now 48V is the maximum teams are allowed to boost to for kickers, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see the pneumatic kickers make a comeback either).
In past years (with low strength limit) effort put into kicker mechanisms went down because there was no competitive advantage due to reaching that limit (and also many teams did not implement any kicking device because the kick was frequently slower than the speed the movement of the robot imparted to the ball) and most solutions were able to kick as hard as was permissible.
With emphasis on the kick increasing we hope and expect for the kicker to become more relevant in Open League, we hope that the ball will be able to outrun the robots again in many cases and make for more interesting gameplay.
In any case feel free to post what league you’re planning to participate in and what other concerns you have, we’ll try our best to get you answers and provide as much context as we can.
Cheers
David