Alright with an update the scissor lift is working but having issues with how it is being lifted, as we looked and looked we tried all types of ideas but the slides seem to lift up and get stuck more than they slide, yes we have put from 2 rubber bands to 30 and same results they kink up. I have provided to videos as they are bad quality but work and see if I can have anyone troubleshoot how to solve this, we have competition next week and kind of stressing atm.
One thing I noticed is that you have slack building up through the stages, i.e. the bottom stage lifts, but the higher up ones not so much. Try adding elastics on each stage and the top and bottom, going from the front joint to the back joint. This might also help with the problem with the sliders.
The main reason, as far as I can tell, that you have problems with the slider blocks lifting up is due to how you’re powering your lift.
I’d certainly be powering any scissor lift I build vertically, however, I would try having the slider drive from one ‘X’ centre to another, rather than from the robot’s base to the first X.
This way the slider would still be driving the lift up the same, although it would be at half the speed, but it wouldn’t be trying to force the green slider blocks up and cause friction. Hopefully this makes sense and helps
In the first video it also looks like the right side of your lifting mechanism is lagging behind the other side until eventually the gears slip. I can’t tell from the video what would cause this but it might be good to check the motors. That unevenness could contribute to the sliders getting off
I will try adding elastics to every X but it still seems no matter how much elastics is there, the slides still lift up more than they slide.
on procrastination pls can you provide a more explained way? I’m not understanding what your trying to explain but you got the problem I’m having correct.
And all the motors are brand new only used on this scissor lift. It’s just that the slides are such an issue but it’s the only thing that will work from what i’ve seen so far.
At the moment, your lift is powered by a vertical rack and pinion set up. You have one end of this mounted to your robot’s base and is fixed relative to your horizontal slide rails, where the friction is occurring, and the other end is mounted to the centre of one of your X’s. When your arm get’s closer to full height, this starts to lift the whole arm, slider blocks included, up slightly relative to the robot’s base, rather than causing the X’s to rotate and the green slider inserts to slide.
If you were to mount the slider with one end on the centre of one X and then the other end mounted to the centre of the next X, I think the problem would be solved as there is nothing that actually pushes the arm up away from the base like how your current system does. This way, the power system will only cause the lift to raise by the X’s rotating. You can also have one side of the X on a fixed mounting this way, with only one side rotating.
Kevin yes I was going to add elastics to every X because I figured it would help anyways a little but I will have to do that on Wednesday. We spent all of our day figuring out an effective solution to making sure the rack and pinion slides don’t move from left to right at all. We came up with a couple ideas to tighten the slides together so there are no gaps and will be doing that tomorrow also.
Procrastination pls I have started to have someone build what you are talking about or moreless a idea to what you have gave us and experiment with us. We don’t have enough time to add your idea to the final design because of time limit in 3 days including programming.
Also stuff that helped a little bit. We added white lithium lube to the slides to make them extra slick, the stabilization bars which I have added a photo of and by adding crossbars to each other. I hope tightening the gap between the gears that lift and the rack and pinion solve the issue alot.
Im having a pulley and wench kit to pull the scissor lift up but its to top heavy how can i make the puleey and wench kit work more stronger and efficent.
I will start with how to make it stronger. More motors and a higher gear ratio.
Without pictures we really can’t tell you much about efficiency. It is all about energy in and energy out. I can’t tell you if your wasting energy without seeing it.
Lets start with the basics. How does the winch and pulley pull it up? I can’t really think of a practical way to pull it up. (you could use rubber bands to pull it up while a winch pulls it DOWN) but without a lot of pulleys(which is where that energy loss comes in) pulling it up doesn’t really seem practical.
Good luck anyway 