Mechanical guns and projectors – Centrifugal – Mechanical
Patent
1986-06-06
1987-12-01
Scanlan, Jr., Richard J.
Mechanical guns and projectors
Centrifugal
Mechanical
124 50, 124 39, 273 26D, A63B 6940
Patent
active
047096853
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
This invention relates to sports training gears, and more specifically it concerns a device for throwing or ejecting balls.
PRIOR ART
Known in the present state of the art is a ball throwing device (of., e.g., French Pat. No. 2,218,113, Int. Cl. A 63 B 69/38, 1974) which comprises a base, a separator mounted on the base and adapted for one-by-one delivery of balls, as well as a striker adapted to eject the ball and set on the drive shaft so as to rotate in a plane square with the drive shaft axis. Located at an exit opening of the separator provided with a chute, is a pusher shaped as a solenoid-operated plunger, which is adapted to feed balls from the separator chute to the striker rotary motion pathway within the zone where the striker hits the ball. In addition, the pusher is operatively associated with the striker through the agency of the timing mechanism.
The timing mechanism of the known ball throwing device comprises a time delay device which is in fact a time delay. The time delay device is adapted for control of the ball throwing time, i.e., the time interval between the two consecutively ejected balls.
The timing mechanism incorporates also a cam set on the drive shaft, and a contact provided on the baseframe and adapted for interacting with the cam when the latter rotates along with the drive shaft. The contact makes during each complete revolution of the cam together with the drive shaft on which the striker is fitted rigidly. The contact is electrically connected to the drive of the ball ejecting pusher and also to the time delay device. The pusher drive is in effect a solenoid.
The time delay device ensures that electric current in conducted to the solenoid actuator at time intervals equal to a preset frequency of ball throwing rather than at each contact making by the cam.
To provide precise operation of the timing mechanism described above, pin-point accuracy of its adjustment is involved, i.e., a mutual position of the contact and the cam should be set very precisely, and precise correlation between the cam operation time and the time delay device operation time. Furthermore, for a preset striker rotation frequency one must so calculate or select experimentally the time of the pusher solenoid actuator engagement that, making due account of the ball mass and elasticity, the mass a strike solenoid movable components and mains voltage, the ball would be ejected by the pusher into the zone of at the instant when the moving striker would occur there. Otherwise the ball either will be short of the strike zone most proper for a strike to deliver, or will overtravel that zone, with the result that the ball either will be struck or hit but ineffectively, or be ejected in random direction.
The complicity of such an adjustment is self-evident; it becomes still higher if one takes into account of routine mains voltage fluctuations and the resultant variations of the solenoid pull and hence the ball translational velocity, while effective operation of the ball throwing device becomes less reliable accordingly. Application of an electronic or electromechanical time delay device renders repairs and maintenance more complicated as involving the use of a specialist.
ESSENCE OF THE INVENTION
It is therefore a primary and essential object of the present invention to provide a ball throwing device, wherein the timing mechanism will have a rather simple and reliable construction.
The aforementioned object is accomplished due to the provision of a balls throwing device, comprising a separator for one-by-one delivery of balls, said separator being associated with a base, a striker fitted on a base-supported drive shaft for angular movement in a plane square with the drive shaft, and a spring-actuated pusher located at the separator exit opening and adapted for displacing balls to the position of their delivery (that is, the stroke position), said pusher being operatively associated with the striker through a timing mechanism that brings the motion of said pusher and said striker in synchr
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patent: 3809047 (1974-05-01), Hess
patent: 3867921 (1975-02-01), Politzer
patent: 4262648 (1981-04-01), Wegener et al.
patent: 4501257 (1985-02-01), Kholin
Knight Anthony
Scanlan, Jr. Richard J.
Sumsky Filial Kharkovskogo Politekhnicheskogo Instituta
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