I know the season hasn’t really begun for most teams, but I’m curious what everyone’s plans are for manipulating the triballs this year. I tried to include all types of intakes I’m familiar with but please correct me if these are not the proper names.
I would say rubber band because it flexes to any shape and there are no gaps like with the flex wheel
Interesting point. When I thought about these options and decided on treads with the rubber inserts, my reasoning was:
Don’t want to buy flex wheels
Rubber bands might not have the force to score a triball
a claw seems inefficient
With this in mind, I chose treads and inserts because I thought they would get the best grip on a triball at maybe 500-600 rpm
I believe what you are referring to as treads are more commonly known as flaps.
I will likely use flaps, rubber bands, or flex wheels.
Another choice to consider is whether you are building it top-down or change-up style with side rollers.
Good question, I do think the the only people building a top-down intake will be the same people using rubber bands. But who knows at this point…
i mean we could see a rapid react (frc’s 2022 game) style intake with 1.625" flex wheels
the rubber band has enough force seen by broken zipties robot
I haven’t seen that yet, can I find it on YouTube?
yes it’s 24118E’s robot
what’s a flex wheel?
You can find information about what a flex wheel is on this website: https://www.vexrobotics.com/vrc-flex-wheels.html
Flex wheels are great for intakes and flywheels because if you get the 30a they compress a lot and they get great grip. Tons of teams used them for intakes last year and tons will this year. I would 100% recommend.
So far after taking a look at the MOA competition and doing some testing myself here is what I’ve found. It would seem that in most scenarios an Top-Down setup is often useful, because it requires less precision when trying to grab the tri-ball compared with side roller options. Also that in terms of flex wheels or a rubber band wheel it largely depends on uses, like if you plan to intake to launch it, but the rubber band wheel with grip-matt seems to stop it from getting stuck and lets you customize the size.
I say Sprocket rollers (what some of you all might call rubber band rollers) due to the large flexibility, and a pretty much unparalleled grip. We currently are using these on our robot, and they work so well you don’t even have to push into the Triballs, it sucks up really well.
how many rollers are you using? I’ve seen most teams using two rollers and not sure why
It depends on where your rollers are. Some teams use two rollers, one in each side. Other teams use one roller on top.
We use a roller with 2 inch flex wheels. It seems to work pretty well, but I would use band rollers if you want to intake into a catapult/flywheel (we just intake to hold). As for why people use two, it’s mainly to be able to outtake once they intake into the catapult, as only a single roller wouldn’t be enough.
Interesting, our intake loads into a cata and we are going to use 6T HS sprockets with 1-inch flaps. I guess that means our rollers will be about 3 inches in diameter.