Our team has been looking at purchasing pneumatics for next year and future teams at our school. We have the (now old) SMC pneumatic systems, and are looking to expand our supply of both tanks and cylinders. We have been able to comb through a number of resources and find everything except the solenoid driver cables. We have done an extensive amount of digging online and have found that VEX still sells these, but only as a piece of the $300 V5 Pneumatics Kit! In order to purchase enough kits for our school it would end up costing thousands, where we could spend hundreds on stocking u on parts we already have. Besides, the fact that you can only purchase official pneumatics in a full kit is ridiculous - need to replace something? Another $300 kit.
The big idea is that we need driver cables, which are no longer available from any mainstream seller, and most sellers (only able to find 1-2) are sketchy. Where can they be found?
You mentioned that you had the legacy SMC pneumatics. You also mentioned that the only way to get new driver cables is to buy the $300 new VEX pneumatics kit, however this kit contains a new driver cable only for the new double acting solenoid. The legacy SMC pneumatics use a different version of the driver cable from VEX, but this is sold separately and can be found here, however it is out of stock at the moment. Scroll to the bottom of the listing under extension cables and you show find the driver cable for $34.69. Extension Cables - VEX Robotics
To my knowledge, no, but everything on the VEX robotics site kind of does based on supply/demand. If you really need to know the timeline for it to be back in stock, VEX sales/support may be able to give you an estimation for it to be back in stock. [email protected] or [email protected], I’d try the first one first.
Unfortunately to my knowledge they usually stayed pretty well stocked right up until VEX announced the new kit, then they went out of stock and rarely came back in. I know some people in our club are worried this may be a way for VEX to start shifting teams away from the legacy pneumatics and towards the new kits as these driver cables were only available through VEX and without them buying and using the legacy pneumatics is essentially pointless.
Are the new solenoid cable compatible with the old solenoids? If so… no problem.
If they are using the lack of cables (service parts in my opinion) as a way to kill the old kit… then that’s just low down and dirty. Those are several hundred dollar kits to throw away due to a $10 part.
Yes, the tubing is the same diameter. The solenoids are compatible with old tanks/cylinders (all they do is have a little metal thing slide back and forth so allow air to go/not go).
The old and new fittings work on the old cylinders too.
Random question: Why are the new fittings so big bulky and heavy? What was wrong with the old SMC ones that fit into places better, were smaller and lighter and performed an absolutely identical function (never had a problem with a fitting being bad, it was always that the tube is not cut straight or not inserted fully). I was getting excited about that 90 degree fitting when announced but $300 later it is so immense that it does not fit anywhere.
I think the problem with all of this is that VEX has shifted heavily to “classroom” products as their priority (you’ll see a lot of VEX people answering here with “what you don’t realize is that V5 is more than competition and that our biggest customers are not the competition teams”) so yeah, it makes sense to put all classroom stuff inside a nice kit box and make things big and heavy and sturdy so clumsy students don’t have an issue with tiny stuff and break things less and the kits last through many hours of classroom activities.
Just for reference, here is the new solenoid (again, super heavy) in the configuration VEX wants us to use it. It’s 68 grams. Most top teams this season ended up with at least 4 air cylinders (front wings back wings etc) so it’s 68x4=272 grams. That’s over half a pound for all of you imperials. Yeah yeah I know, “if you don’t like it don’t use it stop complaining” blah blah, spare me the lectures LOL. It’s robotics. Smaller and lighter and simpler should be the goal.
