You know how standoffs come loose so easily no matter how hard you tighten them? And what if you don’t want to use loctite on your screws? well hear me out, what if you had standoffs with nylock bits on either end? I personally think such parts would be an amazingly useful addition to my toolbox. Thoughts?
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I think it sounds Great!
Y e s
This is actually a great idea, I would love to see this made.
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It would have been such a helpful tool in the game In The Zone on my claw design. Wish I had one now.
It’d have the same issue as nylocks. After a while, they’d lose their locking power. Replaceable thin nylock bits?
Not a bad idea actually. This could simplify standoffs.
While we’re talking about new nylock things, can we get nylock shaft collars? Rubber shaft collars slip too easily and steel shaft collars can come loose.
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We’ve used nylocks from 1-2 years ago and they still hold up just as well as new ones. Are you tightening them too hard?
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I use Teflon washers behind my standoffs so they can compress against something to keep them in place. Maybe a rubber/squishy bit on the end could serve the same purpose?
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I tighten everything too hard, lol.
But really, that’s more from what I’ve heard, not experienced. But I’ve seen some variance in some of my nylocks.
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What if you just apply hot glue bit to the screws?
Because then they get stuck.
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Are we thinking nylon bits (like thin nylocks) on each end of the standoff, or a nylon-lined standoff?
Though I do think there’s some merit to my compressible-tip idea that might hold up to repeated uses better than the nylon standoffs. Maybe.
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But if we were going to add compressible bits at the end, might not change them at all. After all, we can already add compressible bits, it isn’t that hard.
Okay, so maybe that’s a better solution we can employ now. Then work on nylon-infused standoffs for later.
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I agree completely - this would be a really cool thing to add.
But “nylon-infused standoffs” aren’t really a thing, so creating them would require designing a whole new manufacturing process… I think these would be far too expensive to be practical.
Vex sells screws with threadlock compound pre-applied. I don’t really have much experience with them, seeing as my team was too broke to buy any, so I can’t say for certain how many uses they can go through without losing their “lockiness.” Maybe someone else can speak to this. But it seems like using these with standoffs would be just as good as a “nylock standoff” or using the nylon spacer trick (without the need to redesign mechanisms to account for the extra width of a nylon spacer).
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I don’t think it would be impractical per se. Creating a modification to an existing design is more than feasible for a company as big as Vex.
This part would actually be useful as well. Standoffs always come off of stand off couplers which is a huge annoyance especially because standoff couplers are an essential element of advanced building techniques (for me, I use this frequently to brace or connect things – using a coupler and a shaft collar).
Vex may seem big to us, but there’s always a bigger fish. There are thousands of other companies that use nylock nuts, keps nuts, washers, standoffs, etc. often in the exact same sizes Vex uses. Vex doesn’t make their own screws, nuts, or any of that - they buy it wholesale and mark it up to sell to teams.
Vex doesn’t have the manufacturing ability to make their own standoffs, let alone nylon ones. They also probably couldn’t convince an existing factory to manufacture these without large amounts of money.
Would it be useful in VRC? Of course, but it’s not practical to create a whole new type of standoff specifically for one company.
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I mean, they have an entire proprietary v5 system… Not to mention they constantly release new parts and entire games every year. Surely, one piece of hardware wouldn’t be impossible to create.
As for the logistics of Vex and what goes on behind the scenes, none of us really know. So to assume that they would be unable to produce a useful part because of a lack of resources is a bit of a stretch. Though, it might take over 8 weeks to ship hehe.
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Tightens everything too much… yet name is @Got_a_Screw_Loose… hard life man
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Here is a video of a standoff factory: Anma Hardware standoff factory - YouTube
You’d need even more equipment than was found in that video in order to make these nylock standoffs, considering the nylon part would need to be somehow embedded into the metal part (not very easy to do). There is absolutely no way Vex could afford that much equipment just to make a single part.
V5 is, in comparison, relatively easy to make. PCB manufacturing is essentially bathing a piece of fiberglass in a few different vats of chemicals, then using a robot arm to plop components down onto it. These are expensive machines (tens of thousands of dollars each), but it’s worth it considering how many V5 orders they are getting. (Or they are letting some other company in China do the manufacturing for them.)
New game pieces are also really easy to make. Everything happens in a single injection-molding machine. Just make a mold, fill it with plastic, let it harden, and release the part. Creating new injection-molded parts is easy.
But making such a complex metal (and nylon) part, at a price teams are willing to pay, and at relatively low volumes (there aren’t that many Vex teams in the world compared to other uses of screws, standoffs, and nuts), is impossible. The machinery required to make it would be extremely expensive and there is absolutely no way Vex could afford something like this.
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