We just got our field kit in today (I know, it’s late) and when we put it together, we noticed that the flags were way harder to turn than videos have made it look, and a few of them were actually squeaking when they turned. I know that there is a set amount of resistance (the notches), but the polycarbonate flags are bending a concerning amount in order to turn. Has anyone else had this problem? If so, how did you fix it? I don’t want to lubricate anything because I’m afraid of taking it to the other extreme, but it doesn’t seem right this way either.
Unfortunately this stickiness is standard.
Because vex can’t figure out how to manufacture parts correctly cough v5 cough vex wants to prepare us for variations in the real world, the flags are fairly inconsistent. My sister team’s field has virtually 0 resistance, and my friend’s school field has a ton of resistance.
To solve this issue, you will want to shoot the balls very hard and straight at the flags, and you will want to shoot at the green strip of the flags to get enough mechanical advantage to turn the flags. This way, your robot should be able to turn flags no matter how much friction they have.
Good luck!
You could probably build something that just keeps spinning the flags until the resistance is less.
Then you would get destroyed at the local event when you were playing on a different field.
Official Q&A answer:
Flag Lubrication
So if you want to be competition legal field, no lubrication is permitted of the flags.
Apparently the formatting of Tabor’s post got a little screwed up, I think he was trying to respond to Mark Finley’s comment with my comment and then his own comment.
Basically, if you build something that knocks them back and forth a lot, your own flags might eventually lose friction, but the new ones at competitions will have the same amount of friction, and then your launcher will not be able to turn them.
Anyhow, Lacsap is right that lubing the flags is illegal at least for a competition field.
It does seem like the flags are inconsistent. 2 of our flags are really hard to turn, the others turn fairly easily. we just broke in those tough flags with a lot of testing. don’t forget tho, Most likely the flags at major events will have never been used before, so they’ll have much more resistance then the ones we’ve been practicing with for months