The rubber bands on our intake keep snapping, granted the gears are far apart, but they are snapping far more frequently than I previously thought. Do you think its the rubber bands, or to move the gears closer together?
Get better bands, and also move the sprockets closer - make sure you use sprockets NOT gears.
Their are different types one rubber bands. I recommend finding soft stretch rubber bands, that don’t snap near as easy.
probably your bands. ours stretch super far and almost never snap
How old are the rubber bands? Rubber bands do age.
Our team doubles up the rubber bands. If one snaps, there is still one below it.
Can you post a pic of the mechanism is wuestion? Maybe there’s more specific advice to be given.
Oh, also, have you checked for any metal they might scrape against? Anywhere? The tiniest bit of scraping will snap them quickly when they’re stretched a lot.
Sorry for the angle of the picture but that’s out I take. Any suggestions?
Intake*
And i checked and the rubber bands are not scraping against anything
Hi There! Our team had the same issue with the rubber bands snapping, with using sprockets we found that the chain rubs up against the bands and causes small abrasions which lead to snapping. A way around this is to apply another sprocket to one side of the intake and run the chain off of that sprocket instead of on top of the rubber bands, this solution has stopped the snapping of rubber bands when intaking a ball.
Looks like they rub against the chain. Sure, it’s not metal, but as @1581C mentioned, that can be enough to do it.
We had this problem last year but we switched to the official vex orange rubber bands (you can get them at hobby lobby though) and they stopped snapping. but also running the chain on a separate gear is also recommended.
Alright thanks, The problem is that we cant run a chain through on a seperate gear because we have no space and it hits the wheel
This is a close up
May I suggest shortening the spacing of the Intake by moving one side inwards? This is what our team did and it has worked out quite well, and the small spacing gap between the intake and the gear does not compromise performance. You may be reluctant to shorten the intake roller by approximately 3/4 of an inch on one side, as was I when our process first started, but the loss of that small space allowed us to have less snapped rubber bands. This is my opinion is a worthwhile tradeoff, as that space will most likely not decide a match, but having no rubber bands on an intake definitely will cause you to lose.
So do you mean to move the actual c channel or just the sprockets?
They mean move just one sprocket towards the center just enough to fit another sprocket, which will hold the chain.
He means move the sprockets closer together. Looks like you have a really solid structure, so I wouldn’t want to compromise that. Moving the sprockets closer together creates space to add another (to drive).