I noticed that there was no thread to showcase license plate flippers. It seems like a really boring thing, but I noticed that a lot of teams are still screwing their license plates to their robot. It really inefficient when you need to become a different colour quickly.
So here, if anyone has any interesting Ideas for this simple task, then feel free to show them.
I will start with some of ours.
I never got any specific photos of this flipping device, but this picture should do the trick.
Essentially the plates are screwed together with enough of a gap left for an axle, this way the plates can spin freely on the axle. A screw is used to lock them in place.
That one was a little boring, so we build a new one.
This one is pretty much self explanatory
I have to say, I have never seen a robot with a more complex license plate system :P. Although, it would be nice if there was a curved metal plate behind each license plate so that you cannot see the blue license plate when red is activated and vice versa.
I have seen this done quite often, only I have also seen the license plates fall off quite often. I suppose it is the simplest and least space consuming way though
Another good way is to build a clear plastic box, connect the license plates to each other, and then you can take them out and flip them with no hassle.
We connect 2 license plates using 4 of the .5" standoffs, and then make a mount using two 4" standoffs. We can then easily pick up and flip the license plates around and place them back onto the 4" standoff mount.
Below is a picture from our team A that uses this method.
I have never seen a team put so much dedication to a license plate holder! My team (4659) is thinking about making a sliding holder that slides the bottom into a c-channel to stop it from moving. To flip, you would have to slide up and turn it.
Why not use some velcro? put some on the robot and some on each plate, keep the opposite color in your back pocket :). (But if I had the time and space I would totally build a flipper like in that video!)
last year we just bolted the red and blue plates back to back and put velcro on the bottom, and the other piece on one of our chassis rails, then we could just pull the velcro off and flip it around.
It is a bit odd. At the moment anyway. We were thinking about adding a potentiometer to it so that it also acts as the autonomous code switcher, thus making it a little less ‘useless but fantastic’
put some on the robot and some on each plate, keep the opposite color in your back pocket :). (But if I had the time and space I would totally build a flipper like in that video!)