What kind of lifts do you guys think are the best? Low lift or high lifts for shooting robots? What kind of mechanism?
see the recent thread from 1727B, that’s the one we like, thread is in the “robot reveal” area
It makes sense to always aim for a high lift, but sometimes high lifts interfere with the rest of the robot functionalities, which should always come first. Thus low lifts come into play. (Although most low lifts I have seen are just failed high lifts)
In terms of high lifts, I think that either large platform lifts or self lifts are the most versatile. They can normally lift more weight, (Self lifts obviously don’t care about weight) and they tend to be compatible with most robots. I think a really well designed platform lift will work with the most robots, if designed properly it really should be able to lift anything. (Under a certain weight of course.) They do tend to be harder to build.
As I said above, self lifts have the benefit of not worrying about weight, but they sometimes can be very unstable, or too narrow. (Of course a platform lift could suffer from the same issues)
Platform lifts is kind of a general term of course.
Then there’s lifts such as what @Cyber brains uses. Really effective and fast… But somewhat scary. 
Ramp lifts often fail when a high speed robot attempts to climb them. And as far as I can tell, most robots are geared for high speed.
Tis my opinion on said subject anywho.
I’m building a platform lift, hopefully it works.
Well one of our teams has a ramp that we go up and then he lifts, and we (very very high drive ratio) can still get up it. We have to slightly burn out our motors to stay on though (We won our tournament today by lifting multiple times with them as they were on our alliance)
Nice, sounds like a well designed lift.
What angle are they using?
Haven’t measured but I’d estimate 15ish degrees
Ah. That sounds like it’s less steep than some of the other lifts I have seen. (I think) Does it have a assist mechanism?
Yes it uses 2 motors for it
My personal experiences are that a platform lift are best. Built correctly, (like mine) they can easily lift 30 pounds (I would have tested it further but my teacher would not let me). One problem is that a lot of robots can’t get up the ramp, which is why I have a 5 pulley block-and-tackle which can pull around 20 pounds.
What kind of platform lift are you using?
Basically, a ramp.
Steeper angles can be compensated with the mats from the vex store. Though seems like nobody lifts anymore 
A vertical raising ramp?
I’m building a lift, but I ran out of 1x5x35 aluminum. And my order has yet to ship Got a competition in 2 weeks.
I have yet to see a self lift that is compatible with multiple robots. I like the idea, but the ones I have seen need to have thin chassis and special framework above them. I also have not seen a tether lift this year at all.
We have a lift that we’ve yet to find a robot we are not compatible with. I will say we sacrificed other aspects (limited skills scores for instance- think of a tank in the Indy 500). But we decided to try to do 3/4 things as close to perfectly as possible instead of 4/4 @ 75%. It was a strategic decision made early. We’ll see if it pays off. If we qualify for Worlds I’ll post a reveal.