currently my robot has used 7 of the allowed 8 motors. 6 are for drive train and one was used for the roller wheel. Lately ive been considering things i could do with that last motor. I was thinking of using it in some way for endgame, but it would just be fulfilling the purpose of a pneumatic mechanism, which I can use in addition with the motor. Then i thought that maybe i could just make an intake for discs, but it would be difficult to add it, and also with the design of my robot, i dont know if it would be worth it. I thought of maybe adding a second roller wheel, but I could just use chains to connect the one wheel to the other, so it wouldn’t be completely worth using a motor when I could just do a simple adjustment. Is there any suggestions from anyone who is better than my dumb-self who can help?
I would make a flywheel.
Use the motor for expansion. A single motor is lighter than a tank and cylinder. If you’re a roller bot, you have lots of space to make expansion. make an expansion that can get most/all tiles, there are lots of designs online.
You could build an intake and chain your roller to it, then create a flywheel. Can we see your current robot?
8 motor drive and passive roller mech for the win
Make a flywheel. Like, right now.
If you have pneumatics, try making an 8 motor drive with a very, very good expansion. I recently saw a similar set up perform reasonably well at a tournament and at a separate UIL event in Texas
I tried to do this early this season, but it was very unreliable. If you have an extra motor, I would use a motor for the roller mech.
Chain the roller wheel to an intake system. Use the remaining motor for a flywheel. If you’re using one motor, either do a 5:1 geared blue motor (3000RPM) or a cartridgeless motor (~3600RPM).
for a flywheel i’d need an intake, so i’d have to have either an intake with no flywheel or a flywheel thats just there and not shooting anything.
would it serve the same general purpose as the pneumatics? If i just had the motor just spin a bit to release the mechanism, that would work. Thanks for the advice!
I would suggest a flywheel, and if you have room, chain or gear your roller mech to your intake. If you don’t have room, definitely go for a passive roller or drivetrain gearbox that lets you shift two motors to intake.
You can use match loads and pneumatics to shoot
Many have suggested to build a flywheel, and I would say the same, here are some ideas when building and structuring your design:
Oftentimes, teams will use 2 motors for their flywheel, but there is this good design by Ben from 606x, to utilize 1 Motor, without an external gear ratio, allowing for less friction.
You can find the link here → 606X Spin Up | 3600 RPM Explanation - YouTube
Also be sure when building a flywheel to have every measurement squared, and not have anything that isnt even and equal. This could result in added friction.
In addition, I would recommend using the 7th motor, not on the drivetrain for an intake to bring discs into the flywheel, and then have the roller mech chained off of the power of the intake, therefore you can have 1 motor powering 2 utilities.
Thanks again for the question, and be sure to search for topics on VexForum before posting! Best of luck!
I know a lot of high performing teams only intake from the match-load station in their auton skills. If you can shoot directly from it and hold your position in some way, you could at least make 9 discs a match.