Do you guys think a lift is better when it’s assisted with rubber bands? Or does the efficiency of this cancel out because the rubber bands are acting against it when you go back down… what have you guys seen on your bots?
Yes rubber bands help a lot… we measured out the amount to counter act the weight of the dumper when it’s all the way down… this gives you more speed and power and I highly recommend.
10000% better with rubber bands (or the black elastic bands). If you can get your lift motors to be control versus the actual lifting, you have a much better and generally a faster lift.
The big trick is to get the arm to balance nearly on its own with the motors disconnected at the arm in the horizontal position parallel to the floor. Or as close as you can to this. Just make sure it can stay on the down position to start the match without motor power.
if someone did have it where motor power is needed, as my team’s A-bot does, then you can have the motors turned on in pre-auton.
Unfortunately the competition template will promptly send a 0 to the motors when not in driver control or auton. (unless you have your own competition template but motors should be at 0 power in wait state and would in theory fail inspection)
Ok you need rubber band so they pull the lift up. This is to support the weight of the stars on the dumper. Remember that if you are hanging you would need to reduce the number of rubber bands because it acts against the motors. So you need to have the right amount. We use 5 non-latex rubber bands on each side. I think the rubber bands help us a lot though. Remember in Skyrise when we used so many rubber bands for our lift.
I never thought rubber bands were insanely helpful. Most of the time when I was using rubber bands, I put them on after the motors were on.
We are currently working on a new robot. I was working on the arm, and put rubber bands on the arm. At this point, the arm wasn’t motored. Seeing the difference in force it takes with / without rubber bands is absolutely insane. Use rubber bands, but spend a good chunk of time tuning it. It is worth it in the end.
Yeah, don’t do this. You will fail inspection. I wrote my own competition template, because the default template didn’t work with my motor library, and would have made my robot fail inspection (Motors still moved even when allMotorsOff() was called). And honestly, it is worth tuning the rubber band assist to a point where you don’t need motor power. Less strain on motors, and it is just better.