@rikkidaboss it’s nice if you use it because it won’t put as much stress on the motor when it’s slowing down, mainly used for flywheels or things that spin in one direction.
very cool. would this, or the official vex ratchet work better do you think?
I’m a fan of custom ratchets. Earlier this season we tried to use the vex one but our puncher had too much torque and the axel stripped through the plastic on the vex ratchet gear. Making a custom ratchet with the metal high strength inserts would help avoid this problem.
@Xenon We did not know about the standard one … but now looking at it … not sure it fits our need. You can go either way.
tried using the official ones, and shattered 2, so may have to go custom
That is a very simple, but very clever design!
V5 teams may feel happy about the how easy it is to use “Hold” feature on V5 motors and how it saves them time to do something else…
That’s true, but it also takes away the opportunity to think creatively about mechanical design or learn advanced programming, when there is no easy trick available out-of-the-box.
In my opinion, this mechanical solution will always beat software “hold” function in terms of energy consumption and keeping motors cool. Also, if done correctly, it could be more reliable and lower the load and wear on the motor’s internal gears.
You could first gear the motors output up (to increase the speed and decrease the torque), then run it through the official ratchet gear, and then gear it back down to run catapult/puncher at low speed and high torque.
But it is much more interesting to create custom ratchets…
you smarty thanks
This is exactly what I did. You’ve seen my robot.
is it? wasn’t paying much attention to the gears themselves, just the ratchet setup
Yes, it is. And it works pretty well.
I’d have to imagine so, disappointing that I hadn’t thought of that myself.
I’ve seen the video, and I understand most of it, but what is the axle part of the ratchet attached too?
It’s a make shift setup … to hold the axle … using a shaft collar.