For most teams, the season is over. Lots of you have access to parts that are not in the standard V1, V2 or competition kits. Tell us what parts you used and how it worked out for you.
I’ll offer 2
2x Wide, 5x Pitch Diameter Balloon Tire - I love these, on the lower holes of a 2x frame gives a lower center of gravity. Using these as driven rear wheels with omni’s as a free wheel fronts give you speed and turning.
Large Rubber Intake Belt - this is a great replacement for chain for short distance movements. It can transmit more than chain does without breaking.
Of course these pale to the 0x2, 0x3 pins. Coming soon in 0x4, 0x5 and code named “godzilla” the 0x6 pin sizes.
Our kids have found a lot of use in the parts that formed the blue towers from Slapshot; I think they were 4x16? Great for making a tall/long piece for structure.
I’d be curious in a similar vein to this question, what parts do you use in an “off-label” manner? For instance, 0.5 pitch standoff extenders make excellent shaft endcaps because they won’t spin in the plastic like the ones with the square holes.
I’m going to guess this is not exactly what you’re looking for, but maybe some have not seen this. I had a friend 3d print some parts to make the head on my life-sized R2D2
My kids always find the below pieces useful every season. It’s their problem solving pieces to guide field elements into certain areas in their robots and jam prevention pieces.
Thanks for the video. I didn’t know that there were plans available for the 1/3 sized model. With all the plates from Slap Shot, I should have enough to build it. They appear to be gone, I’ll reach out to Damien Kee to see if they can be put back on-line.
Their intended use is to hold little plastic panels onto the robot, but there are always other uses for every part. I, for example, used them in my robotic arm build (non-competition) to keep the rotating part of the base stable on the “grounded” part of the base. Without them, the whole top of the arm would tilt slightly and the 2 parts of the base would scrape together, causing high friction. Additionally, they are greatly useful for stopping the end of an axle from moving in a direction while saving yourself a rubber shaft collar., as well as sometimes being stronger than a rubber shaft collar. In the previously mentioned robotic arm, the base rotated with the help of an axle placed vertically. In that case, I may have needed multiple rubber shaft collars to stop the axle from slipping down and out of the robot if not for these little pins.
I think they are awesome, they really make it easy to create custom gear trains. The capped ones are great, the 0x2 capped version (far left) is my goto in most cases. But the real hero of that family picture is the 1x2 idler pin (second from the left). It’s a quick way build compound and or compact gear sets. They come in the differential gear set with a number of the Double 2x Wide, 2x2 Double Offset Corner Connectors that make chassis builds go super fast.
One of the sadness in the idler pin family is the 0x3 from VEX Go. It’s got the “weak” connections so I don’t trust it for other than prototype work. I know that there shouldn’t be stress on idler gears, but I’ve been around since the burgundy pin days.
If used properly, there isn’t anything wrong with them.
However, they incite poorly cantilevered wheels. When I first got into VEX IQ, I thought they were meant for exactly that. I’ll leave it up to your imagination to see how that went. All I’ll say is they look too much like axles to the beginner mind.
All in all, they have their uses, like every other part, but they sure do promote some pretty awkward situations.
My son’s team likes the planetary gear pieces. They only ever use it in a configuration with the ring gear locked, but running the sun gear and outputting via the planet carrier is a compact, sturdy 4:1 reduction in speed with corresponding boost in torque. My son has been able to use a single motor to power a fairly heavy double-reverse 4 bar lift (which his team may use in Mix and Match this season). My son also built drivetrain running the planet carrier off the motor and outputting to the drive wheel - nice gain in output speed. He zooms this around the house banging up our floor board trim. The only issue with sun as output is the normal wheels (omni, etc) are the same diameter as the planetary assembly so need wheels with larger diameter if using in this fashion.
