Hey All,
So at my Vex competition this weekend, I found it interesting that some teams had very functional ramps, but we didn’t see anyone successfully elevate. This said, when I tried driving my robot (4 motor, 1:1 standard direct drive with Omnis) up one such ramp, it was just too narrow. With my final robot build coming soon, I wanted to see to what dimensions the community was building their ramps to, so we non-elevators can be best compatible with that sometimes match-defining component.
With the ramp I built early this year it had the tracks all the way at the sides of the robot (i.e. it supported drives with 16" apart wheels). I have also seen most robots doing it the same as us, or just supporting all drives.
Our robot’s ramp is a little bit less than 18" wide with a very acute angle. It’s hard to explain how we lift our alliance, but we are making a reveal.
I’ll be interested to see it 
It got us excellence award and design award TWICE.
It is definitely harder than it seems. A couple weekends ago we attended a competition in Minnesota. There were 2 teams that had ramps/lifts but not once during qualifications did a successful elevation occur. We were fortunate enough to be the 1st ranked alliance and we chose a simple ramp robot as our 3rd alliance member. Our robot seemed to be the only robot with a powerful enough drive to go up the ramp. We were able to pull off two (or three?) successful elevations during the elimination rounds (low elevate). It was a lot of fun (first elevation done in Minnesota!)
Teams that are building ramps definitely need to consider who their alliance members are likely to be. It’s easy to build a ramp. It’s a lot harder to build one that will accommodate any size robot.
We are currently adding a lift mechanism to our robot that we are confident will be able to lift any size/dimension robot up to about 20-25 pounds. It will not require any effort on part of our alliance members…that way we can be confident we will be able to lift during each match.
This year the middle school teams are focusing on lifting, not as much as shooting, but in my opinion have a perfect launcher and then a lift for a strong robot. Trust me your hard work will pay off. Make sure you think of a way to not tip while lifting. I learned that the hard way…