My team was wondering if it would be more beneficial to hang by grasping the hanging pole for the inside, or the outside. As of now, we think we might build something like a needle intake from Skyrise, to plant into the hanging pole and lift.
If you grip it from the inside, the hanging pole will support some of your robot’s weight, therefore making it hypothetically a tad bit easier.
On the other hand, that plunger’s going to experience roughly an entire robot’s worth of force bending it, so it may not be incredibly beneficial, especially if it has to be repaired or replaced between competitions or worst case, in competition.
Also, gripping it from the inside will not rely on friction. If you grab the outside of the pole, I could see your robot getting knocked off the pole by the driver load cube. However, you’re going to have enormous amounts of torque on that plunger, so I-beam, here we come!
Inside will give you a better hold on the pole. Why use a plunger? build a rubber-band elevator with a ratchet-modified ‘tow cable’ to pull it off.
I’m just gonna leave this here.
I don’t think any motors have the torque to pull that off, and if they are geared down, it will be extremely slow.
It’s a good thing we have stored energy in the form of rubber bands.
oh there’s no doubt that the motors an pull it off if you have a light robot and geared correctly. I think the main questions is how would you grasp the pole?
This method was fairly popular during the 2010 FRC game Breakaway. Certainly not the only way. Just a way.
I was thinking of a cup, that goes over the pole. Maybe there can be some string attached to it which can winch the robot up. I’m not 100% sure whether “cupping” the pole is legal though.
Karthiks team did it that way in 2010 and its alot easier then you think. I know one of our teams is doing that lift and being a simple bot that just pushes everything into the 1 pt area
What about a hook? Wouldn’t that be more easy?
I agree OverlyOptimisticProgramer. Back in Toss Up was my first year competing and just a simple linear motion hook gave us a %100 at getting high hangs.
The issue with the hook is possibly the hook bending under the load and the thing with the cup is that it is harder to bend under the load because it it acting on multiple sides of the pipe.
Back in Toss Up we never had to change the hook even after a whole season of competition.
Just a really beefy hook.
Not really
I think a hook that hooks the top of the pvc would be kind of over complicated and large because you would have linear slides all the way up the pipe for only going a foot up. My suggestion would be, since there is a brace that keeps the pvc in place 12" above the ground, and since the brace forms a sort of lip around the pvc, you could use a high torque geared claw that would attach to the pvc, but wouldn’t slide down because of the brace that keeps the pvc in place. The claw would be attached to a shorter linear slide.
If your using a lift to knock down the stars off the fence or make it easier to get the cube over just make a very strong bar that comes out that has one bar going in front of the poll with alot of traction and another behind the poll with alot of traction. That way its pacive and you use it with your lift.