We’re building a spatula intake, but no matter the spacing between our standoffs, we still end up with stars stuck in between the prongs. I’ve seen several successful spatula intakes around the forums, how did you guys solve this problem?
We found that stars were getting stuck (1)because the standoffs were getting bent and (2)because we would try and lift up before the intake was completely under a star(s). Hope this helps 
What exactly do you mean by stuck?
I’m not sure how to exactly describe it, but here goes.
A star has 6 points. You could cut it in half with a plane such that each half has 3 points. This plane is defined by two standoffs next to each other on the spatula, so that one half of the star is below the intake and the other half is above.
Oh, that sometimes happens to my fork. Usually it’s not an issue. Just make sure that when you’re picking up the stars your fork is all the way down and the stars should be able to be dumped out of the fork pretty easily.
I had the same problem until I moved to only having two prongs between my side plates.
After that, I only ever once had that problem, and it was because I hadn’t lowered my intake all the way.
We have this problem occasionally as well but our new, rubber band, latch for the spatula allows stars that are stuck to still be dumped over the fence.
Could you maybe attach a picture??? I’m interested to see how that works
our solution is simple, brute force.
My team is building a catapult that uses a pronged intake, similar to the RI3D team’s. Will this be an issue for us?
We haven’t finished building the catapult part yet, so I’d like to get this answered before we finish it in the case of this being a probable issue.
The only time a star really gets stuck is when the intake is partly off the ground and slides through the middle of a star.
Maybe you should look into an instant reset, like. This
It would prevent you from intaking on the middle,
Of course, ive always wanted a claw intake catapult.
/end dreams
That still is a thing you can do. Just tune your release to be at the right height and bam.
I was responding to
Unless you were responding to him too… 
#confused
Thank you. We fixed this problem a while ago, before our competition on the 5th. I forgot to mention that here…
But you diagnosed the problem exactly. Our standoffs were loosening constantly, and adding washers helped tremendously. We then tweaked our spacing slightly and made sure our driver only intook while the intake was all the way down.