Passive Lock?

VEX V5 General Discussion General Forum
#1

Hello everyone,
Thanks for your earlier help with pneumatics, but it appears that we won’t be able to buy them in time for our next competition.

I was looking at 4080 and some other teams’ passive locking mechanism for hanging, and I am kinda clueless in regards to how they make the arm move normally, but only activate the lock while hanging. Could someone explain how to create a passive hanging lock.
I also watched 4080’s lock video, but I couldn’t see what was going on unfortunately.

Thanks in advance,
Sumant

#2

you dont need to lift the arm fully to score
the arm will lift fully only when you are about to hang
when the arm goes above X height, the lock mechanism will activate
when you pull yourself up, the lock will prevent you from falling once the power is cut

Thats pretty much the gist of it

#3

We will try and post some pictures and video on Monday. We just got back home from an event 6 hours away and won’t have an opportunity tomorrow.

#4

https://vexforum.com/t/passive-latching-mechanism/25247/1
I believe you’ve already seen 4080’s thread but I’ll still post it here. Have fun!

#5

In that case, if you accidentally lift it too much, the lock will be activated.

#6

I think it would be controlled from the program, and not fully dependent on the user. Maybe if you push button a, it raises to the height for scoring. If you push buttons a and b simultaneously, then it goes up all the way. It would make sense to have a soft limit built in so that it is not possible to raise it up all the way unless you are really sure you want to. This it how our robot works. It launches the game pieces with a pneumatic sling shot type thing. if the pressure gets too low, it isn’t able to lower the sling shot all the way. The program allows it to launch 15 times, and then it will not let the user launch it again. this is because when the sling shot isn’t all the way down, the robot cannot fit under the barrier. (there is an override though, just in case.)

-Jimmy

#7

Yes that was exactly what we had in the past
and it gives the ability to override as well

#8

Sounds good.

#9