On board air compressor legality with pressure gauge

[tennisnerd3]

I have seen several forum posts for the legality of on board air compressors. I know that if I can build an air compressor out of only vex, it would be legal. However, a reply to a post by vex staff said that it is not legal due to the 100 PSI limit. If you could either code a system to determine how much air is lost after a certain number of pumps or build some sort of pressure gauge out of vex parts, and only run the compressor for a specific amount of time until the 100 psi limit is reached, would it be legal? This is very complicated, but is interesting as a proof of concept. Thanks!

[holbrook]

Welcome to the forum @tennisnerd3!

This would be prohibited by R25:

<R25> Pneumatics are limited. Pneumatic devices may only be charged to a maximum of 100 psi. Teams may only use a maximum of two (2) legal VEX pneumatic air reservoirs on a Robot.

The intent of this rule is to limit Robots to the air pressure stored in two reservoir tanks, as well as the normal working air pressure contained in their pneumatic cylinders and tubing on the Robot. Teams may not use other elements (e.g. surgical tubing) for the purposes of storing or generating air pressure. Teams who use cylinders and additional pneumatic tubing for no purpose other than additional storage are in violation of the spirit of this rule and will fail inspection.

(emphasis mine)

[Railgunawesome]

I would say no, due to safety concerns

[Connor]

@tennisnerd3

If you could either code a system to determine how much air is lost after a certain number of pumps or build some sort of pressure gauge out of vex parts, and only run the compressor for a specific amount of time until the 100 psi limit is reached, would it be legal?

You can connect a gauge during practice and graph out how much pressure is used to activate a cylinder over time, and also lifespan of the pressure itself to have a relative estimate of PSI based upon those actions. So you add those estimates into your code based upon controller actions to provide some simple insight as to how many actuations you have left and estimated PSI during competition.