Scissor lift with separate big ball and Bucky ball intakes. catapult is also used to hang (otherwise why would you power the down stroke?[or are you?])
EDIT:
the mechanism confused me. I can’t see the ‘down stroke’
So I was just looking at the picture and thought I’d comment.
I would guess six bar lift based on the view right above the plate in the triangle between the two c-channels. It seems like a six-bar to me as the lift is up and the two bars are close together but there is a good chance I’m wrong :o.
For intakes, I would guess side rollers that are capable of handling both types of balls. I would guess this because you have two motors designated for it and there does not seem to be enough metal in the picture for a top roller. I could be wrong on this though as well.
I would also guess you have a housing that has pneumatically firing c-channels on the perimeter. We are seeing one of the hinges for one side of the firing mechanism in the picture. The big balls sit on these c-channels when the c-channels aren’t up and the pneumatics are reverse actuated to fling these c-channels. Are the actuators reverse actuated to maximize the force you can exert? I know several teams have found that double acting provide more force in the reverse direction.
One thing I would recommend though, put some locking collars around your pneumatics when they are attached to the axle to make sure they stay in one place. We had some pneumatics that got bent because we didn’t put locking collars and these really struggle to do anything now.
We did have a scissor lift at one point, but we were never able to tune it to our satisfaction, so we scrapped it.
4 pistons are definitely necessary for what we have in mind
You’re good at this…
Actually, the instroke of a double-acting cylinder is weaker than the outstroke, since there’s a lower cross-sectional area inside the piston in its direction. We oriented them this way since there wasn’t much room to place them anywhere else, and that gravity assists the pistons as they retract. We will definitely put shaft collars to secure the pneumatics.
We haven’t had any overheating problems yet, though we haven’t tested how well it fares in pushing contests. We haven’t weighed the robot either, but it’s not too heavy, my best guess is about 14 pounds.
It’s held in place by the arm at the start of the match, when the arm is raised, it’s pulled out by rubber bands.We haven’t actually used it in a match yet, we just added it after tipping in a crucial match at our last tournament, causing us to lose.
It slightly slows down driving over the bump backwards, but it generally has little effect.
We do have a gyroscope, but not for that purpose.
I’ve made some videos of older versions of our robot public on youtube, our current robot bears little resemblance to this one: