Purposes for Pneumatics?

VEX Robotics Competition Discussion VRC > Previous Games
1

Pneumatics have many functions in a competitive robot. Those of you who are using them this year: What functions are you employing them for?

2

Yes. Lots. Probably will have a bunch of tanks. Or 2 if all goes well. One time use mechanisms.

  • Andrew

P.S. I wish I could vote for more than one :confused:

3

I was thinking of perhaps a snap-out descorer of some sort to quickly empty troughs.

4

We’re thinking 2-3 tanks for some rather unusual ideas. If they work, I’ll let you know.

5

I can only check one that apply :frowning:

But I think they will be very popular for transmissions this year. And if people decide to make claws or shovels, pneumatics are a great way to actuate those intakes.

We’re going to use pneumatics to turn motors to generate voltage to charge the batteries so we don’t need to buy more battery chargers. [/sarcasm]

6

One of our team members suggested (jokingly) that we could have a pneumatic drivetrain, by having the pistons push and pull a wheel around like the wheel-pushing bars on a choo-choo train.
http://www.edward-weston.com/images/KimWeston/Train%20Wheels,%2011%20x%2014%20neg%20on%20verso.jpg

1 Like
7

A team mate and I had this idea back towards the beginning of the gateway season. We have always talked about it and we would really like to make one but we cannot because do not have much time.

8

Also the fact of the matter is your air would be gone in about 2 seconds.

  • Andrew
9

90% of my designs use pnuematics this season, ill probably use them to flip out and intake like I did last year

10

An EXO student built a motor like this a couple of years ago. It worked pretty well for fun, but there is no real reason to use it on a competition robot. (The air lasted a lot longer than two seconds, by the way.)

11

Yea, our main reason for building it would be just for fun and to say that “we did it”. We never planned to put it onto a competition robot.

12

Pneumatic Train Drive = 10 motor arm = 102 sacks lifted :slight_smile:

13

I don’t know if this is practical on a competition robot with air tanks, but MESS made this pneumatic engine using a compressor: VEX 2 piston pneumatic engine - aMEss - YouTube

14