My team would like to do a double reverse 4 bar and be an internal stacker. We need as much room between the arms of the top 4 bar so that we can drop cones onto the mogo. Our towers would be at the very ends of the sides of the robot. Because of this, we can’t put motors on one side of the towers because it sticks out of the robot and goes outside parameters, but we also can’t put them on the other side of the towers because the arms of the top lift would hit them. We recently resorted to using chain, however, we believe it would snap a lot because of the strain that would be put upon it. Should we stick with chain, or should we go another way like bevel gears or worm gears? The thing is these gears aren’t the strongest and may strip a lot of the time. Are there any other ways, or should we stick to chain since it’s the most reliable as of now?
Many people will tell you not to use chain, and that’s fairly sound advice, but it’s not horrible if you have to. The high-strength chain is actually fairly strong, and I know a team that used it for their Starstruck robot’s lift without any real issue. Fitting motors on an internal stacker’s lift this year is a pain in the neck.
My team would like to use 4 motors, two for each tower, so how would we chain that up? Would it look like a triangle? The two sprockets being run by the motors would be like the two points of the triangle and the third point be the sprocket being run by the chain setup?
You could do that. Personally, I would gear the two motors together on both sides, and have a single sprocket with a chain leading off to the lift.
If I understand the issue correctly, I believe you could put your motors on the moving part of the lift (the end of the bottom 4-bar).
Yes, we could do that but we would like to keep the mass of the lift low since we have to put a chain bar and a claw.