I’m Catherine from team 1492X WASABI. We built this robot over the last couple days to prototype a 4 cube capacity intake. It works pretty well; however, we have moved onto a different design that we think might work better. We’re sharing this idea as potential inspiration for other teams. Enjoy!
I really like the intake on your robot Catherine! I was really surprised when I saw it pivot and score the 2 other cubes at an angle. What would have made it a beast though was if it had a lift which could raise higher, and if it could pick up the skyrise pieces. I’m glad to see that WASABI is still going strong!
Thanks Robert! We will definitely be adding another stage to our scissor lift so that it can reach the high goal posts. Adding a skyrise section building mechanism is also something that we’re working on right now.
ABSOLUTELY OUTSTANDING! It is really exciting to see this type of effective intake at this point of the season. I am speechless about the intake. Mind blowing… starting to doubt my design…
I do wonder how you mounted the doubled up 84 tooth gears onto your metal bar firmly. May I take a close look at your gear mounting? Thanks!
That’s a very nice robot! I really like the double needle design and tilting mechanism it’s a really cool way of having a 4 cube capacity. I look forward to your future designs.
I am very impressed, Cathrine. I was wondering about the selection of wheels you chose. Was there a reason for it, or did you just run out of omni-wheels. I am just curious, but other than that my mind was blown.
The two pairs of omniwheels at the ends make sure that the robot can still turn. The traction wheels in the middle don’t affect the turning, but still prevent the robot from being pushed sideways.
How quickly did you run out of air with this design? I would think that with limited pneumatics this year, it might be hard to make it through a whole match.
Sure! We used VEX’s new high strength 84 tooth gears on our lift; here’s a picture of the first stage of our lift:
Credits to Tiger from 9090C for helping us with the scissor lift.
Bobthesmartypants is correct–we wanted to have traction wheels so that we wouldn’t get pushed around as easily as if we only had omniwheels. We placed them in the centre so that they wouldn’t interfere with turning.
Our robot is about 13 lbs. right now.
I haven’t been able to test this design on a field under match circumstances, so I can’t say for sure if it lasts an entire match. However, we only have one air tank on the robot at the moment, so I’m sure that if we add another tank there would be enough air to last through an entire match.
hey! that’s almost exactly what ours looks like! we have a single pneumatic needle intake in the front that can hold 2 cubes (hopefully 3 in the future??), a sorta pneumatic sky rise claw in the back, and a 6-motor scissor lift taking up the rest of the robot. Differences: we have an x-drive with flip out front wheels and 3.25" wheels and normal speed motors.
Also, our scissor lift is gear 21:1 instead of 7:1!!! HOW DID YOU MANAGE 7:1 RELIABLY??? any advice? I’m using old fashioned sliders, I can post pictures.
Also, my lift, partly due to reinforcements and partly due to the gearing, takes up a lot of the robot’s internal space. How did you get a compact yet sturdy (not swaying) structure? Do you use a potentiometer program to mitigate the swaying?
Also, what are you planning for your sky rise intake? I’m gonna guess a pneumatic claw that sticks+flips outwards in the back.
You’ll notice that our robot’s all higher geared from the drive to the lift. probably because of weight. Any weight cutting advice? Especially in the lift?
Eugenefan1-100 is right–having 6 motors on the lift definitely helps with a reliable 1:7 lift, but since you also have 6 motors, the main difference between our two lifts is probably between how we built our lifts. I’m not quite sure what sort of old fashioned sliders you’re talking about, so pictures would be nice!
Tuning the elastics and having multiple c-channels that go across both halves of the lift helped prevent swaying for us. Minimizing the number of gears on the lift will minimize friction and also help the lift. We didn’t have a potentiometer program on that robot, but we will add one later on.
We’re looking into a pneumatic claw-type mechanism or a plunger-type mechanism (like Stanley/7793r’s prototype) right now.
We aimed to build a very minimal robot in general; we only had one fat c-channel on the robot. I would advise you to use thin c-channels over fat c-channels whenever possible, and consider doubling/tripling/quadrupling 1x25 pieces (see the first stage of our lift). Don’t completely compromise stability for a lighter robot, but don’t be afraid to try out some lighter-but-potentially-sketch methods.
We JUST finished our three stage scissor with 125 bars extended to be 135 bars. The swinging is really not that bad. But the connection points of metal is an issue from time to time. Only thing left for our lift is tuning elastics. But with 4 motors it is impossible for us to go 4 stages reliably.
What kind of gear ratio are you going for? If you increase the torque on the motors, 4 stages shouldn’t be a problem. We have 5 stages with only 4 motors, at a 1:21 ratio.
