Dankest Vex Memes?

[Illyana]

Yo, 3D printing is hot!

To the point of us forgetting about the last week’s controversy: penalty free pneumatics.

@Jon_Jack

While yes, there’s no motor penalty to use pneumatics, there’s still a penalty that I feel many people are handwaving:

You still have to design a pneumatics system into your robot.

This includes mounting the tanks on your robot, mounting the solenoids on your robot, routing hoses, interfacing the cylinders with the rest of your robot, troubleshooting any leaks that you have (or may come up mid-season)… plus you have no compressor - which is huge.

Plus don’t forget that tanks and cylinders are made from stainless steel. There’s a lot of brass in a pneumatics system too. Stainless and brass are heavy materials, which will weigh down your robot.

@Jon_Jack

Yes, you can use unlimited cylinders - but you are limited to the number of actuations you can make since you can’t recharge your pneumatics with an onboard compressor. So it’s not unlimited free energy. Compare this to a V5 motor, which given the current motor usage limits and the V5 battery performance effectively gives you consistent, unlimited usage during a match.

@Jon_Jack

Since every actuation releases pressure from the system each time you actuate you have less and less force until you eventually don’t have enough force to move your mechanism.

@Jon_Jack

However, there’s been a growing trend over the last 5-7 years where teams are choosing to NOT use pneumatics. Why?

• Pneumatics are heavy and overall teams have been trending toward smaller and lighter robots. There’s only so much weight you can remove from a pneumatics system. At the end of the day, if you’re using pneumatics in FRC, you’re dedicating at least 5-10 lbs of your weight budget to it.
• For many teams pneumatics are problematic. It’s very difficult to build a pneumatics system that does not leak air. These air leaks can be catastrophic if you’re relying on pneumatics for a mission critical part of your robot. You leave your pit full of air, you walk to your match, there’s a delay (maybe two) and next thing you know you’re down 10-20% of your air. Yes, you can recharge during a match, but this means you’re running an extra motor which means there’s less power from the battery available for your other motors.

@Jon_Jack

There’s a lot of technical reasons why teams would want to run pneumatics, but they’re still trending away from it.

What will the next Game Manual Update bring on us? Ten second end game autonomous and mandatory V5 bike helmets to protect V5 brains when falling off the ramp?