On board air compressor

VEX V5 General Discussion Technical Discussion
#21

They would have to. They aren’t directly breaking any rules.

#22

Or, instead you could simply do the pumping in the program. Whenever a cylinder activates, the motor for the pump turns on for N strokes. Keep the tanks at 90-95 psi at all times and you’ll be just fine.

#23

What do you mean?

#24

That’s a good idea!

#25

Head ref has final say.

#26

Yep!

#27

I hope all of you realize that there’s an actual pressure regulator that vex sells with their pneumatic systems.
You can set the regulator to 100 psi, and then you wont have to worry about exceeding 100 psi, because it will mechanically leak out air if the tank goes over 100 psi (you may need to put it on backwards to achieve this).

#28

Oh so thats what that does…

#29

I actually tried this idea last year and had the pump working, but it wasn’t effective for nbn. I also asked in the official q and a whether this was allowed and I wasnt answered for over a month so…

#30

@TurboTech
but what was the answer???

#31

I pulled the post off because without a reply in that time frame, I wasnt expecting the question to ever be answered and i needed to move on to continue building my bot. I assume it is up to the discretion of the ref or inspector. I had a couple other things mentioned in that q and a post that I want quite ready to reveal so I pulled it and never got to putting the original question back up.

#32

Doesn’t that control the rate which air goes into the pistons/not how much air is actually in the tank?

taken from : http://content.vexrobotics.com/docs/instructions/VEX_PneumaticsKit-INST-0712.pdf

#33

I guess it would work backwards too? My understanding of pneumatics is limited to “Push tube in fitting, pump air, activate solenoid, and it works.”

#34

I’m fairly certain that is a flow limiter not a pressure regulator. Vex would do themselves a favor and update the below pdf, because it is very confusing. It looks like a needle valve.

#35

The fitting on the piston is a flow regulator. That is a pressure regulator.

#36

How is a flow limiter a pressure regulator? If you limit flow, it will eventually exponentially get to the source pressure, just takes longer.

#37

@TriDragon it works well enough at what it does, though.

#38

If you combine the regulator and tricks in programming you should be just fine.

#39

Culdnt you just build the air compressor as a module and if the ref does not like if, than just unplug it and take it out.

#40

Well your robot would probably not make any sense.

  1. The motors on the compressor
  2. The 2 motors you could have if you didn’t have pistons
  3. The air supply you have isn’t enough to run a match