Hey! Does anybody know which is the best type of robot we can make? We are looking for the less heavy pieces to let the robot work faster, but we’ll like to have a faster one. We have been looking some old competitions videos and they work really fast! Can you help us?
Thank you!
If you did some research, you would know you could make a 10 motor turbo drive with a 2 motor mobile goal lift. Using aluminum parts brings weight down a ton.
There is no “best robot,” many types of robot will work this year. Aluminum is less heavy, so use that for a speed base. Also, in the future try to search the forum before asking a question. Here are a couple threads relating to this topic:
https://vexforum.com/t/building-a-speed-bot-advice/35385/1
https://vexforum.com/t/fast-base-help/33330/1
https://vexforum.com/t/824c-experimental-fast-drives/39121/1
https://vexforum.com/t/drive-train-speeds/21714/1
One of our teams has an 8 motor turbo drive and two mobile goal lifts. They did end up using two pieces of steel because the aluminum in those two spots was getting bent.
@Steel the biggest concern when you make a robot that fast is driving skill. Early season, a really fast pushbot can even be competitive due to defense and being able to move its mobile goals into the 10 point zone and being able to keep the other alliance from getting to their own mobile goals.
It is not a complete strategy and will not be effective for very long, but it can be useful for a new team early season.
I have an 8-motor turbo drive… but we stack cones and move (edit: pick up, and place in the 20-point zone, as I should specify) mobile goals. You don’t need to make a simple robot to have a drive with a lot of motors.
Yes, this is a rookie team and we only meet 3 days a week with most of the people only making it 2 days a week. This sort of reduces expectations.
Right now, that team is just being a defensive bot that can also move and hold two mobile goals at the same time and can score from either one into the 20 point zone with or without cones.
They have a plan for adding the ability to stack cones, but they are not their yet. As it is, the robot has the ability to score 102 points in driving skills. The driving skills of the team is not there yet, though.
We usually only meet two or sometimes three days a week, but that is supplemented by me taking the robot to my house to work during breaks. We probably work 4-5 hours when we do work, though, and I am far from a rookie, so I should be more efficient. Not sure how that compares.
Bars that are supporting critical components should be made out of steel. This allows for strength and stability. Extraneous bars, such as exterior bars or other non-critical bars, can be aluminum, helping with lightness. The arm mechanism should be made out of steel to, while the arm itself should be made out of aluminum (this puts less strain on the motors).
Pretty much everything should be aluminum. The only time I have replaced aluminum with steel is when the aluminum parts I use bent bent (which is rare).
Well what you can do is have an aluminum robot so the your robot can be less heavy then you can put the motors on high speed then you can have pneumatics to help. (Well maybe pneumatics)
Pneumatics are pretty heavy, I don’t think its a good idea to go pneumatics this year. There are a lot (80) of cones in this game.
I am with @Aponthis on this one. The only time to use steel is in the rare situation aluminum is bending. Even then, there may be better (lighter) options in the design rather than going to steel. In this game with such light game objects (except for the mobile goals) and being limited to just moving 1 at a time, there is really no need for steel at all.
Hey guys, second time replier here.
Build a robot with 8 turbo motors on the drive and 2 motors for mogo lift/mogo tipper. Then implement pneumatic brakes for rock solid defense. Op BoT dEsIgN!!! With enough driver practice you should never lose!
If you want a meta bot that is very fast then you could build a robot with a 6 motor drive, 1 motor mogo lift, 2 motor dr4b, 2 motor 4b (or chain bar) for cone intake, and 1 motor Goliath cone intake.
If you are looking for a fast drive you should check out the hamster drive XD
Hehe
Some general tips for speed without using extra motors are as follows:
Control friction. Wherever there is metal to metal, or metal to plastic, add plastic washers to make it metal to plastic or preferably plastic to plastic.
Don’t use steel.
Use lighter aluminum (ex using 2c instead of 5c).
Only use as many supports as you need.
More specific Tips:
Drive:
Keep other subsystems light.
Use omnis for turn speed.
Make certain you do calculations beforehand to get your best ratio and wheel size for optimum ground speed.
Lift:
Keep as much weight off the end of the arms as possible.
Keep the lift motors off of the lift
Use half C.
Secondary Lift:
Keep arm size small.
Use passive to keep end of lift light.
Mobile Goal Lift:
Keep arm size as small as possible. Besides that, there’s not much you can do for this guy.
Just want to say this is optional, whether it makes your lift better or worse truly depends on build quality
Not necessarily the best way to go at this either, hypothetically I could make a mobile goal lift using 5 length 2by as the arm but in reality that would just be silly. The optimal mobile goal lift utilizes somewhere within the 10-15 holes range
Sorry, meant as short as possible while still being able to deliver flat into the 10 and 20 pt zones. And I kind of disagree about the motors on the lift thing, if you have 3-4 motors on it, taking them off can decrease weight by almost a full pound.
This past weekend, I saw a new robot that was not complete yet. It was mobile goal only for the tournament but will be adding a cone intake. For now, it has 8 turbo speed motors on the drive and 4 turbo speed motors on the mobile goal. He is planning on using 3 more motors for the cone intake system and 1 more motor for a cage.
Honestly, it was the fastest Vex robot I have seen. We have a team with an 8 motor turbo speed drive and a 1 motor mobile goal lift. It has two potential additional configurations. One is with a 2 motor cage and the the other is with a 3 motor cone intake system and it will easily convert from one to the other.
For skills, he has been using it without any additional system but plans to use the cone intake for driver skills at the next tournament. The team is not satisfied with their 104 point driving skills since they had several seconds left. For programming, they will probably continue to just do mogos plus the pre-load.