We just got back from winning a tournament and now we are going to prepare for nationals. However we need to add a launcher to our robot. We all agreed on using pneumatics for our launcher and are going to start prototyping on monday.
**Before anyone goes and tells us that pneumatics are not the best for a launcher, I would like to point out the following:
**
Our robot can score with a forklift in the far zone
our robot can high hang
we have a holonomic drive that allows us to strafe.
And all of this uses exactly 10 motors. We will be using the pneumatic launcher on our forklift as a secondary scoring method. The two middle bars on the forklift will be where the launch bars go, and in the space between the front wheels we will put two air reservoirs.
I’ve included some old photos of our robot for reference. However they don’t show our hanging bar attached to the robot.
Congrats on winning your first tournament! There is no “Nationals” to qualify for World Championships in the US. Create U.S. Open which is a great event, but does not qualify you for VEX Worlds in Louisville KY. You should probably have your sights set for Southern New England Regional Championships in Worcester, MA March 4&5 2017.
Do try out a lot of ideas in the upcoming tournaments.
As for pneumatics, you should base your decision based on the demands of competitions. How much experience do you have using pneumatics? How many launches do you expect to use in a typical match? These are all important considerations.
If your fork lift is successful, can’t you optimize it? Speed is of essence in this game.
You will likely find that your decisions are likely to change during the course of the season as the competitions gets more experienced.
I see 8 motors in the picture. Where are the other 2? I agree with @lacsap about optimization. If your lift is slow, add 2 motors to that. If your drive is slow add 2 motors and use a higher ratio. I could be wrong, but I think using pneumatics on a lift will require multiple pistons on full pressure, which will drain your tanks fairly fast as you will need to be scoring constantly.
What I think you should do is try a launcher-dumper hybrid, where you can both launch and dump using about 6-8 motors, rather than 4 motor dumper and pneumatic launcher. But if you were going towards a 4 motor dumper and pneumatic launcher, I think you should actually have a 4 motor dumper and a 4 motor launcher (Since you can have a total of 12 motors w/o pneumatics).
From the timestamp of the picture, it is from 6 weeks ago, so expect some changes. Moreover, the fence appears to be in the wrong location - making far throws to the perimeter wall easier (I am assuming the fence is in their for decoration).
I highly recommend teams to take pictures of every iteration of their designs. I like seeing the design evolution through sketches, pictures etc. The picture having a timestamp in the image establishes a date. Good practice.
Thats what we’re going for. Right now we can only score by dumping stars over the fence behind us. Our launcher is going to be on our forklift to allow us to shoot forward. As for using motors we’ve had several prototypes made (slip gear, choo-choo, pretty much all of the recommended types) but all of them either don’t fit inside our robot, don’t have enough power, or are too delicate to use in active competition.
(I am assuming the fence is in their for decoration).