Part of our robot is lopsided becuase we have the weight of a motor on one side, this is causing issues with scoring skyrise sections. Is there anything about the weight of a motor that is not really big?
I’m not sure what motors weigh, but it might say it on the products site. You could weigh it and then get various small steel bits to add weight until it’s balanced
Adding weight on the opposite side is an option, but you might be better off adding more elastics to the side the has more weight.
With our robot that is difficult to accomplish. We Have a telescoping lift that goes out at varying angles rather than strait up. Besides, the 3 motors that that the burden seem to handle the bit of extra weight we applied.
Steel plates full of screws and nuts work well.
Making a box out of rack gear holders to hold 1/4" screws or nuts is a nice variable weight.
Big hunks of steel start to weight a lot.
I like this idea. I think it would be funny for the team to show up with a bucket of bolts attached to the robot. I can hear the questions now asking what purpose they serve. The team could tell them that the team name is ID10T5 and we are as smart as a bucket of bolts and we brought along a bucket to prove it.
This has the added advantage of letting the team compete with a robot with no wheels.
I think VEX is one of the few robot competitions in which you have less than enough motor power and you have to work around the PTC issue.
I am never a big fan of adding weight, but a whole bunch of steel plates might be a nice idea. Still, I would lean towards program and elastics to keep balance.
Our club spent like 400 dollars on aluminum parts this year because we keep stressing how more weight means less base speed and more PTC heating. However, our A team had this all steel bar lift that tilts forward. They just simply slam a huge amount of steel plates on the base. Tilting issue solved, we can barely carry the robot anymore because it is such a heavy thing. This made our mentor question the money spending… because the all steel thing is still able to run.
Funny. I am the mentor for Bottomnotch’s team. They started the year with an all aluminum scissor lift. Now, they have a very heavy, mostly steel stationary robot that can build the skyrise and score cubes at the same time without leaving the starting tile.
They are just now getting this new design reliable and will be taking it to a skills only match this weekend. They are focusing on the skyrise right now, but plan to score some cubes as well.
Because they never leave the starting tile, they are nearly impossible to defend. It is a violation to touch them or any scoring object they are touching because they never leave the starting tile.
It will be interesting to see if they do well enough to make it to worlds.
There are other problems associated with Aluminum in terms of structural integrity. It is a softer metal, so you need to reinforce it at high stress points and it is very flexible, resulting in very wobbly structures. As for weight issues, a solid base to prevent falling over and careful balancing of lifts when handling loads up high.
I’d be interested in seeing Bottomnotch’s final design for a stationary bot. You really will need a good alliance partner to feed you cubes once you exhaust the skyrise sections.
Unfortunately our robot hasn’t done well outside of practice, every time we take it to a competition it seems to fail, including yesterdays skills competition. So our season is over now. However, we are still proud of our design and in practice reliably scored 3 skyrise sections and a cube in a minute. Also we still plan on doing a reveal because there has been a bit of interest on the forums.