So we’ve been trying to turn over the caps using our intakes and obviously we’re making the intake go upwards so that it turns… but when we tried it in our hallway it didnt work because the floor was quite slippery… while it somewhat worked in our room which had carpet…
Since we can’t buy the vex field and its components like the field’s floor we don’t know how much friction the competition’s floor will be like and thus we dont know how to make sure our intake turning the caps will work…
What shall we do
how can we find similar real life material to the competition field’s floor?
should we add more rubber bands to the intake? should we even take it to the length of doing a goliath intake?
Should we make the intake go at a faster speed instead?
Any other ideas?
I don’t have more accurate information, but it seems to be that any store-bought foam tiles would do. My flipper pretty much only works on foam, too, so it’s not that uncommon of a problem to have.
And I actually had to slow down my flipper for better results. It seems kind of counter intuitive, but it worked for me. I’ve even seen teams cut down on their rubber bands to give the cap something to grip to. But I’ve also seen some pretty thick intakes. Mine is somewhere in between. A picture might help, but you should also look at how high your intake is off the ground. It needs to be low enough to “grab” the cap. It was pretty much the first thing I changed once I got my kit.
If I’m looking at it correctly, it looks like you’re straight shafting your motor to the lower roller. I’m not sure if that’s fast enough. But, if you can almost flip it on carpet, you should be fine. The best way to test it without the foam is to give the cap some friction. I just put my foot in front of it, then drove into it. If that works easily, you should be fine. But just in general, unless you have a turbo speed motor powering your roller, it may be nice to speed it up.
I’m not sure about the baby mats, but if they’re similar to Vex’s foam tiles, go for it. I’m sure you can find foam matting at a big chain store in your area.
Did not know you were in Japan - no way to tell from your post.
Softtile spec : SoftTiles 2x2 are 4 sq. ft. per tile. (2ft x 2ft in size) Foam Mat Thickness: 5/8 inch (14mm).
Thickness matters, as well as, sponginess of the material.
We found the SoftTile interlock is opposite orientation to those VEX uses. (we just got some samples from the company so we can do a border around our fields as we are no longer allow to tape anything to floors.
