We are attempting to build wings using motors since pneumatics are out of stock. Below is a picture of what we are trying to accomplish.
What’s the best or simplest way to attach the motor to the frame?
How can we make the wings lock in place when it’s fully extended.
Is it okay to use the plastic from the vex trophies to put on the wings?
We looked at other videos on YouTube and just about all of them show wings using pneumatics. We want to use motors. Either one motor to operate both wings or two motors for both sides.
Any help or suggestions is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
If you’re using motors, i would do vertical wings.
Use a c-channrl flange to mount the motor and wings, then use a few 90 degree gussets to attach it to the drivetrain
Vertical wings would need no lock, just a well build High stregth shaft attachment. Since you’re pushing on them horizontally, the force is perpendicular to the rotation of the joint, locking itself
I don’t know the plastic type, just check to make sure the plastic type and thickness is legal
This is probably best for your teams to figure out with their own experimentation, although you can use lock bars to attach the shaft to the wing or, like you’ve shown in the picture, use a gear. Something else that I think can be explored is to make the wings flip out vertically, as discussed in this thread below:
If this is what a team would want to do, this would involve making some sort of passive locking mechanism so that the wing, when fully extended, will not be able to retract backward. I personally think having the ability to retract your wings is rather important, though, so a team might want to think about this. (I’m not sure if I am interpreting what you’re saying wrong, but when you mention locking, do you mean a mechanism that keeps the wings in place temporarily or until it is reset by hand?
The VEX trophies wouldn’t be legal for use. See section R6 in the game manual.
I would recommend this setup for wings as it could cause a sudden and back driving of the motor which could damage the motor.
I would suggest something simple like verticle whigs where the force of the hits goes through the hinge into the chassis instead of the motor. This should also greatly improve the rigidity of the wings and stop the motors from overheating when trying to hold the wings in that position under load.
Or if you feel up to the challenge, search for locking wings on YouTube so you can have your motors in coast and let the locking take any hits.
Another thing to think about is the wing is a giant lever so any time the robot slams the end of the wing into something the torque will be force * distance.
Flipping the wings out vertically might be the quickest and easiest method. We are trying to make a few modifications to our robot before our next compitition.
This is a picture of our robot. We are wanting to add wings to it. After we add the wings we plan to shorten the intack and add a catapult. For this post we are concentrating on adding wings.
Just curious, if that is a modified hero bot, wha does it look like extended?
For wing placement though, put it on the side closest to your center of mass
Assuming the intake flips put along the green arrow, I recommend you put the wings on the corner where the blue circle is and on the oposite side too. However, I also recommend that you shorten your intake flip out significatly to prevent your center of mass from going too far from the wings.
(Quick note, space the wheels out more to prevent tipping)
Currently the intake is on an arm that moves forward and back. The picture shows it in the back position. We plan to take the arm off and shorten the intake up front in the center.
If we connect the wings to operate vertically what piece would you use so that it moves smoothly? I know we would need to mount a motor on each side as well.
The last modification we plan to do is add a catapult to the rear over top where the brain is. It’ll need to be motor oporated.
I just wanna say, really nice mechanism!
However, this area:
Is considered concave, and would therefore not be plowing but possession, and you might get a violation for that. Move it up about 4 or 5 holes and you shoudl be fine.
The picture you attached is actually my picture (I’m flattered lol) I think I explained this is in a different forum but I’ll explain it again
The motor is hanging off of a 90 degree angle pieces which is attached to the side of the robot, an axle is going through the motor and a 36 tooth gear sits on it. That gear is screwed onto a C channel. So when the gear spins the wing goes with it.
My main suggestion is to use 5.5w motors for it. There is a good chance you might not have them (or even know what they are, For some reason teams aren’t using them) But if you do you’ll save yourself a motor
As far as coding we just have it set to 50% speed and 100% torque, so if you changed to 5.5w motors the speed wouldn’t change
Not really under my interpretation of QA 1688. If the space that the possession occurs in is far smaller than the triball, it’s not possession. You still might want to make them flat though, as not all judges will have the same interpretation and it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Thing is we didn’t actually build it, since we got pneumatics we just used it as an idea in our notebook. But by tuning the code and maybe adding a rotational sensor on top you can get accurate turns. As far as locking, I am pretty sure the motors are strong enough to push many tri-balls at once. gl
