it’s essentially just a parallelogram. That I power, shifting the angles in order to get that upwards motion while keeping the end parallel. see this article for more details:
https://wiki.purduesigbots.com/hardware/lifts/four-bar
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If you’re wondering how 4 bar lifts work in general, this is another excellent recourse:
Kepler Electronics The Ultimate Guide to Bar Lifts
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Hey! I’m a high school student and would love to build your design for our next competition. Would you mind sending a layout or design for your build? And if there’s any special parts, where you bought them? I’ve looked for the pneumatic clamp on the vex site but can’t find it.
I’m not going to send instructions to build my robot, and I do not encourage holecounts of my design. Of course, by sharing it there’s nothing I can do to stop people, but the intent is for people to learn from the design and get ideas for their robots.
Of course you can ask for help or advice and many people, myself included, will tell you what we can, but the actual design of the robot itself comes down to you only.
They are unfortunately out of stock at the moment.
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lol I didn’t think you would but my teammate wanted me to ask. Anyways this is my first year working with vex, so I don’t know how to strategize or really build that well. Any general tips on the build?
There is a lot of good information that can be found on the forum. I’d recommend checking out the Vexforum Wiki, as well as the BLRS Purdue Sigbots Wiki as well. This thread may be helpful as well, as it gives many general build tips.
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I can try those sites. My ideas are quite minimalistic, so I also need a bit of creativity I guess as well. But thanks for the suggestions!
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I could not agree more, we partner up with 2496N ( an incredible goal bot) and it worked out quite well at Mt. Sac. They fought for goals while we filled up alliance goals with rings. Then after they balanced we would place another goal loaded with rings right behind them.
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and while a goal lifting bot is the ideal partner for a ring scoring bot, I do think it’s important for ring bots to have the ability to lift goals onto the platform as well, so that the goal lifting bot can be left to deal with neutral goals, and the ring bot can deal with filling up, and then lifting of alliance goals. It’s a more balanced and effective division of tasks if the goal lifting bot only has to worry about getting neutral goals and not alliance goals.
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I agree, you need to have a hybrid that can do it all.
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I keep seeing these complicated, humongous bots. The designs that I have in my head are simple and small. Do I really need these bulky robots to do well in the competitions?
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Keep in mind this is one of the best bots in one of the most competitive regions.
To answer your question, it depends on what you define as “do well”. If you want to win state, you will likely need something like this. However, if you define doing well as winning a couple matches and making the elimination rounds, then a simpler design will do just fine.
Part of it also depends on your region. California and Texas have some of the most competitive robots. In Kansas robots are much less complex. What event region are you in?
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this robot might be deceptively complicated, while it’s certainly not as simple as it gets, it’s nothing in comparison to how complicated other robots have been.
if you’re not comfortable undertaking more complicated designs, that’s just fine. A simple robot can beat a complex robot all day if that simple robot is more consistent, fast, and solid. A robot that does nothing but grab and lift goals onto the platform can be extremely effective, especially at this point in the season. And depending on your region, that could be all you need to win competitions.
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I would also like to know the answer to this question.
it was originally 360 rpm with 6m on a differential between the lift and the drive, but that was too weak. We ended up splitting the motors 4m drive 2m lift, and we did so very close to our first event, so to ensure we wouldn’t have any drive issues we went with the safe 200 rpm option. This is super slow though, and for our next iteration we are certainly planning on going higher.
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GL at Mcbride this weekend, we will be keeping track down in Chula Vista.
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I’m in Tennessee. And by do well I mean as you said, winning matches and performing well against other bots. I honestly don’t care about winning as much I just want a bot that is something to be proud of.
@Xenon27 Great reveal I have a question though do you plan on adding more features to your bot where you can hold more than one tower and if so how would you implement that?
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well currently it can hold one goal and sort of drag another behind it, but yes we do plan on increasing our goal capacity, though it isn’t yet determined how we’ll do that.
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@Xenon27 I’m sorry if I’m asking dumb questions here I’m kinda new. But how exactly did you implement pneumatic clamps?