pic: 968 has ramps? Since when????
 

Re: pic: 968 has ramps? Since when????
 

I am very interested in the team on the left ramp, appearing to be team number 1332. They seem to have ramps that unroll out; something that is new to me. I searched their site but cannot find any photos on this specific ramp.

Does anyone have pictures of team 1332 and their ramps?

[Edit]: to answer your question, Travis; it always had.

Re: pic: 968 has ramps? Since when????
 

I'd say they were well worth the effort of shaving off that last pound plus!;)

RAWC's got an awesome machine: incredibly fast, powerful, and maneuverable while extremely mass efficient all with the workmanship of a classic car. Your drivers were quite adept at eluding defenders and racing to the rack. Great robot and super team!

I hope to see RAWC in action again.

Re: pic: 968 has ramps? Since when????
 

It's good to see that y'all finally found the time to get them working and attached to the machines. :)

Re: pic: 968 has ramps? Since when????
 

are you going to alt???

Re: pic: 968 has ramps? Since when????
 

Great Job! Those ramps look sweet, and your robot looks like an overall great competitor. How did you end up doing?

Re: pic: 968 has ramps? Since when????
 

I personally believe that their ramps were not neccasary. Their robot is a great scorer regardless of ramps. Having ramps forces a good scoring robot like 968 to have to go back and deploy ramps. Not to mention that most robots arent able to fit on their ramps. Nonetheless, it hides their incredibly elegant design and paintjob.

Re: pic: 968 has ramps? Since when????
 

While we did have to drive back to deploy the ramps, there were many times where tubes were so scattered on the rack that there would be no way to get 60 additional points in tubes.. even if you filled all of the available spider legs.

As far as most robots not being able to fit, at 38" wide, I disagree. We didn't have one robot fall off, and the few robots that did climb up seemed to have a pretty easy time doing so.

The great thing is the ramps are entirely passive from the rest of the robot. We pull 2 pins per side and they are gone. If we are on an alliance with ramps, we can remove them and drive (as we have been) at a light and fast 86 lbs.

Re: pic: 968 has ramps? Since when????
 

Those are some very impressive ramps. Having the foresight to be able to remove them that easily is always a good thing during build. I have a couple of questions about them:

1. How do you drop the ramps? It sounds like you have servos which hold the ramps up, do they just release grip of the cables?
2. How do you fire the gas shocks? (This is the answer I'm really looking for...)
3. Also, what is the angle of the ramps?
4. How do robots get up them? Do they drive onto the incline and you fire the shocks?

Re: pic: 968 has ramps? Since when????
 

To anwser:
1. we have a servo on the top which holds on to two cables. we release the servo and the ramps fall via gravity.
2. at the end of the ramp there is a leaver when switched will release the gas shocks.
3. around 17 degrees
4. the ramps start at an incline. they have to drive up and hit the leaver to activate the ramps.

Re: pic: 968 has ramps? Since when????
 

So the robot driving up activates the ramps. And if so can we see a picture of that?

Re: pic: 968 has ramps? Since when????
 

i was glad to help put in the orders (though Kirk skipped the table to fill out the paper sometimes) and help provide the power services to get those ramps working. Great job. hope to see a great robot from you guys next year. Good luck in Atlanta.

Re: pic: 968 has ramps? Since when????
 

I'm curious to know if this is solely a 968 thing, or if you colloborated with 254 on the ramps. I don't recall seeing any ramps on 254 at SVR nor did I hear about 254 having any ramps.

Re: pic: 968 has ramps? Since when????
 

254 did have the same ramps at SVR but couldn't get their gas spring release in working order, so they left them off.

Re: pic: 968 has ramps? Since when????
 

I remember those ramps deploying for the first time, it was unforgettable. It made drilling into our robot's battery box worth it. And watching the refs trying to determine if both robots counted for the full 60 pts was kind of funny. It took like 4 refs to decide. Unfortunately one robot was slightly under the 12" mark but what can you do.