You will need tank tread to make hooks. They can attach to chain, or you can make a whole belt out of them, You will need the ones that have two holes in them. Screw standoffs to the holes, and attach whatever you are planning to use as a hook to the other side of the standoffs.
Researching online through youtube gives a great deal of ideas and tips!
6 Likes
In my opinion Hook is better than Hood. Hereâs why:
Consistency: I feel that yes, hood is more consistent as if tuned right, it will always fling the rings onto the goal, making them well and truly scored. In my experience in making both types of intake, this has been the case and if not tuned perfectly, hood intakes tend to only place the ring on the goal, causing it to get stuck or take time to actually fall on the goal.
Resources and Weight: The hood intake uses lots of flex wheels, which are expensive and kinda hard to come by right now if teams donât already have them, It also uses lots of chain, axles, places to hold those axles, shaft collars, and it also has the added weight of a hood, making it far more resource heavy and heavier in general.
Space: Generally hook intakes have a lower profile, being thinner as they donât really have to fully encapsulate the rings, and this means teams using Hooks will have more space to experiment with wall stake/climbing mechs
The one downside that people have seen with the hook intake is that is may be slower, as it is one continuous and fast stage, whereas hook intakes are usually two stage, starting with flew wheels and transitioning to hooks. This transition is where the hook intakes lose time over hood intakes. However, as we have seen from many teams, it has been relatively easy to speed up this transition, making the hook intake just as fast as hood intakes.
Therefore, I feel hooks are superior.
5 Likes
Frankly, I think this debate is kind of stupid.
For my personal opinion, Hood, because from what I have seen, fundamentally, the idea of less moving parts is more consistent than more moving parts. Hood has less moving parts than hook in general because you dont need to worry about a conveyor and/or how the hooks slam down onto the goal. After you tune a hood, thereâs less that can go wrong. With hook, you need a perfectly tuned transition stage, plus a perfect goal alignment, plus a perfect grab with the hook so the ring doesnât land backwards on the goal which would be really bad as it would prevent other rings from going down. With hood, its honestly more intuitive to tune because you can see how the rings fall in relative to the goal.
Hood is more consistent in the design itself. because a hook intake relies on the hook placement being almost perfect relative to the goal, meaning that it struggles when a mogoâs position varies. Hood, however, has a much better range to work with, as the large surface area of the hood + the flex wheels on it allow the rings to have more luck with a slightly imperfect mogo position than they would with hook.
Many argue that a hook intake is easier to make a wall stake mech with. However, this is simply false. The only mechs that are exclusive to hook are 4 bar intake lift (which requires you to drop a mogo, so itâs not that great in the first place) and the china mech (which is very good, but honestly overbuilt and not worthwhile). Redirects are completely viable on hood intakes and are just as good, if not better, than the ones on hook (main reason I say âbetterâ is because you donât have to worry about the hood coming into contact with anything and stopping the transmission, unlike hook).
Hook is good right now because its still pretty good at scoring on mogos. However, I think hood intakes will begin phasing them out and hook will become obselete. In my opinion, if you have the parts and time to build a hood, you should do it now rather than later.
Important, however: this is just my opinion. If you have a good set of hooks that works, use it. You donât need to rebuild to hood just because ACE or JAR did it, and you dont need to make new hooks because 100A and Barc won MOA. As long as you can score rings, youâll be fine. Hooks may become obselete in the future but theyâre still really good for now.
5 Likes
you forgot to mention the added weight of the flex wheels, the time spent tuning the flex wheel stages, the compression on the hood, and the fact that it has more moving parts than a hook intake.
hook is dominant since itâs quick to tune, leaving teams with plenty of time for driver practice and autonomous coding, It is also arguably better due to its lack of complexity and its adaptability to nearly every single robot, It is also very lightweight due to it not needing 6-8 flex wheels compared to the hood intake.
the gear reversal on the hook intake is also extremely easy to maintain as it only introduces 1 motor axle at the most depending on how teams decide to go about this.
while you are allowed to have your own opinions, I believe itâs wrong to point out only the pros of 1 side and not the cons as well.
6 Likes
Sure hood is more consistent but it takes longer to tune and itâs also more complicated for newer teams to build l like @stromboli_499A had mentioned
Yes, a hood intake has cons. However, I do think that those cons are mostly insignificant compared to the pros. The âeasier to tuneâ part is SUBJECTIVE, as many teams have found it easier and more intuitive to tune a hood than hook, whereas some teams have taken multiple revisions of the intake to go for hook. Many teams who used hook at MOA, such as 8110W, are planning to switch to hood. The weight is also not that important compared to the consistency benefits of a hood, as you can still run high speed gear ratios and still not burn out (229V and I believe 2775V both ran 480 for their MOA bot). For newer teams, yes, hook is arguably better, but I think the hoodâs consistency is much more important than the weight savings or time spent tuning the hood. Frankly, I think you are exaggerating the cons of hood and downplaying the cons of hook. But again, I do think both are viable and usable. My sister team has a pretty nice set of hooks right now, and many others who have better hooks than hoods.
im also going from hook to hood lmao
2 Likes
both are good but seeing the flex wheel shortage, most teams will probably lean toward hook.
1 Like
I disagree, it doesnât take that much longer to tune and its also more intuitive to tune than hook. Newer teams might find it more beneficial to go with a flap type hood like 44252A (LTC / Little Will) did, as it is pretty simple and the most time will be spent either tuning the front stage (which you need to do for hook anyways) and tuning the hood itself (which isnt that much harder than tuning the hook intake).