I was wondering whether the adhesive foam is good for gripping cones and such. My team is building a cone intake and were wondering if regular old mesh would do, but I wanted to check before we order anything.
Regular mesh should be fine; I personally find it to have more friction than the VEX adhesive foam.
For our starstruck claw, we used the foam with rubber bands wrapped around it every few inches. If you want extra grab and friction, use rubber bands wrapped around the arms of the claw. Also, mesh does not take up as much space, giving it a bit of an advantage.
I’d go with mesh because it takes less space. Also, it obviously has holes in it which makes it easy to zip tie it to the claw. The foam has to be secured in another way usually. Also, the anti-slip mat comes in larger chunks, for much less of the cost.
Sanding the foam gave us quite a bit of friction for our starstruck claw - the layer of something that protects the foam makes it have less friction.
Rubber mesh seems to work in all applications, is a lot easier to attach, and costs less. Personally I’d say mesh.
We decided to use the mesh on the intake for cones and mobile goals. However, I didn’t think of adding rubber bands. Thanks for the tip!