I have seen many good teams use claws that unfold out of the robot’s base. I was wondering if anyone knew of an easy and efficient way to accomplish this. Thank You.
We don’t use this technique, but I have seen other teams put the claw on a hinge. Then, you use a rubber band so it wants to unfold. But you use another part of the robot to hold it in place until the match starts. A good way to do this is to pinch the claw in the folded position between the bottom of the lift and the chassis of the robot. Once the lift is lifted during auton, the claw is no longer pinched and the rubber bands pull it out to it’s unfolded position. Good luck!
We have a folding claw right now, and we don’t love it because it’s a pain to flip out in autonomous without it tipping the cone over or trapping the pre-load cone under the robot.
That said, as @Easton mentioned, you use the VEX part that’s a hinge. Our claw folds upward (as opposed to underneath). We have rubber bands that wrap from the claw around to underneath it providing downward pull so that it wants to flip down. It’s an annoying balancing act to get the claw down for starting in the 18x18x18" box (=>not too much pull) and reliably popping out (=>lots of pull).