In a recent tournament we got 2nd place, one of the reasons our final match didn’t go well was because our robot’s wheel ended up getting stuck on a ring and we were unable to get to the goal and stack. Is there is a good way to fix this? We will be redoing our base this week (will use 4 motors).
Also, if anyone could tell us a really good gear ratio/what motor to use to make our 4 motor drive very fast, that would be appreciated.
I’m not well versed in anything vex iq related but you could put guards around your wheels, that’s what a lot of people are doing in VRC to stop the purple rings from getting stuck.
Do you have a picture/link of vex guards? im not 100% sure what you are referring to
I don’t have a picture or link but I’ll explain the concept. You basically just put the plastic pieces around your wheels to stop the rings from even getting to them. Edit I see you changed it to VRC so yeah don’t do plastic pieces instead use c channels.
You could put lexan skirts on the sides on the sides of the wheels. Then you can just put a small c channel on the in front of your wheels to protect it from the front.
I attached an image of our skirts.
If you have room, you could move your robot’s wheels down, to give you higher ground clearance, and, therefore, not getting stuck on rings as often.
At our last tournament we added some flat metal to the bottom of our robot so if a ring got underneath the robot can slide off of it instead of the ring getting lodged. Ideally stop the ring from getting under the robot to begin with, but you should make sure a ring can’t get stuck if that happens.
Non-shattering plastic skirts work great
A lot of people are either using standoffs, small c channels or even polycarb strips attached to the front and back of their drivetrain sides. They push the rings out of the way so they cant get caught under the wheels/structural pieces
Can you post an image showing how the motors are geared to the wheels, and the current clearance to ground?
So my team had a very similar problem that almost cost us first place. So, we made a revision and added non-slip onto the front of our robot. The non-slip made it to where we could drive up the balance beam, but still protect us from rings. It didn’t look too pretty, but it worked really well. I sadly don’t have any clear pictures.
We used long screws screwed onto the outside of our drivetrain. If you can manage to get the spacing and the length right, it works just as well as polycarb basically.
Thanks for the replies guys, we did not settle for second this time and won our tournament. Time for state 
