Flip Down Intakes

VEX V5 Technical Support UNOFFICIAL Tech Support
1

Regarding intakes that fold down, rather than around. Would it be best if the intakes had a lock or nah, and why?

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2

I don’t think that it would need a lock since the intake could just rely on gravity to stay in position.

3

Unless the arms were too powerful. But yeah, only go with a lock if need be

4

band it hard enough and no need for lock

5

I depends, we actually utilized friction to our advantage as some teams’ intakes would bend upward when pulling in cubes. We had a c-channel with screw heads sticking out a bit to prevent our flip-down intake from bending out but it also served as a one way gate (kinda, mostly due to the screw heads) and a friction lock. It was built 7 hours b4 our comp.

4 Likes
6

Yup, we had the bending upward problem too and solved it with a lock. If you look at the Chinese teams, they don’t seem to have a ton of rubber bands…

3 Likes
7

but the rubber bands are shorter than you think.

8

Also, how would you stop the intakes from being pushed up when intaking cubes if there was no lock?

9

It usually isn’t a problem when trying to intake cubes, since they are travelling parallel to the intake. It should only occur if you come down from the top of a cube or if you are placing/removing from a tower.

10

But with a lot of tray bots, their intakes aren’t parallel to the cube rack so sometimes the cube would push the intakes upwards. Would lowering the gap between the cube rack and intake solve this problem?

11

Most traybots I’ve seen don’t have their intakes parallel to the tray, and it hasn’t seemed to be a problem for any of them when intaking.

12

Interesting, i thing my issue is occurring because the gap between the intakes and the cube rack is too large

13

you could get rubber bands to constantly pull them down

14

If you send pictures we might be able to help. I had flip down intakes with nothing holding them down and I didn’t have tok much issue keeping it down.
The only problem was turning while the cube in the intake was touching the ground, which caused the intake to roll up and over the cube. It was easily unjammed and didnt waste too much time though so it was ok.

1 Like
15

I have very weak rubber banding on the intakes in order to help with deploy and keep the rollers down. I contemplated a lock but I haven’t found a need to implement one due to the angle of my rollers.