Elastic Assistance

Question for you all when you’re building your lifting mechanisms or what not.

How do you guys use rubber bands or other elastic material to assist your lift?

Pics would be appreciated. Interested in seeing how to aid the 6-bar lift my kids have made.

For 6-bar, the standard placement of elastics is top of tower down to bottom of middle vertical, top of middle vertical down to bottom of outer vertical. Typically these are run between standoffs installed perpendicular to the structural members.

Is there a picture to show this better?

google search for vex 6 bar elastics:

side rollers?

Working with a claw on a 6-bar lift instead.

Basically. What we do is find two points on the lift that get closer together as the lift rises. on a 4 bar for example, this could be 2 opposite corners, as when the lift is fully raised, they are nearly touching but when the lift is down, they are apart. Attaching an elastic between these point will assist in pulling those point together therefor raising the lift. On just a normal arm, we attached the elastics from a point at the base of the arm, then up and around the pivot point to a point on our towers.