Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

This one has me stumped. What are some efficient ways to get one of these balls from the ground to your shooter?

Currently we have a tube with 1 Wheel on each side that guides the balls up, but this seems inefficient.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

Belts. nuff said.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

This.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

Belts are a really good idea for this, as aforementioned. Imagine having one wall stationary, and squeezing the balls against it is a belt system with rollers, to raise it up to a given throwing wheel. That's what you're gonna want, as that will give you the best results. This is a tried and true method from my years of experience. Good luck!

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

beltseltsbeltsbelts =D But people have already said this.

We already tested some belts today and they work fine with these balls.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

Thanks alot for elaborating on the idea. I was looking for the best way to do it and it looks like the answer is clear.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

In 2009, 2470 used a conveyor belt to pick up balls and put them in our hopper. With this year's game I think you would need a vertical implementation of a conveyor belt system. That way once you are at the top of the system you can just have the ball plop right down inside of your turret/cannon/catapult.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

Check out these matches and look further into teams that interest you. There are still some good photos of teams form those years on chief.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

I third the belts comment. I have seen a lot of successes with the use of belts. To state further ideas, a spiral with a constantly spinning axle with hard brushes has been a consistent means of gathering balls. It is whatever you think is the most optimal means; I love your idea of a tube with wheels, but just providing insight on what has been effective. :)

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

This is a good idea, however you wouldn't want to make it be able to hold very many balls to reduce the risk of carrying more than three and reduce the time it takes for the balls to get from the ground to the launching mechanism. It would really only be useful for a specific design that requires this for something the belts can't do. Not trying to shoot down the idea, just clarifying any downsides.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

I complete understand, and agree; I was continuing references, and the spiral one was often displayed in Lunacy, where multiple balls could be held at a time (sorry for not clarifying).

I do think belts would be efficient means of transport, but as stated, just throwing out other ideas. Trying to get the good ol' brain pumping, ya know? ;)

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

Definitely. At this point, basically anything is game until we've found a real legitimate reason not to use it. We would probably also end up seeing one or two new ways of picking up balls that we didn't see in Lunacy.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

Check FRC Designs for some of the Lunacy CAD's of conveyors.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

Has someone already mentioned belts? And maybe also about belts, and other possibilities involving belts?

Oh yeah, there's also this cool thing called a belt drive/conveyor system, which runs on BELLTTTSSS

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

Moving onto another part of the turret, any ideas on how to power/motorize the lazy susans? All I've heard is make your own custom large sprocket. Seeing as how that really isn't an option for my team, any team have any household solutions for this?

- Sunny G.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

Maybe a motor with an encoder. Can you fit an encoder on a window motor? or maybe on that new andymark planetary gear?

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

You can do it on the cheap very easily. Like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfFGw...C65188EFF4A22D

We used a globe motor and a large gear from the kit. For the large gear, we cut out a circle, bolted it to a lazy susan, and then stapled belting around the outside.

...it was absolutely, disastrously the wrong solution for Lunacy, but I think it could work quite well for Rebound Rumble.

Oh, and with lazy susan, belt, and gear in the kit, the net cost was somewhere around $4 for the plywood.

It's worth noting as well that the shooter was very wide because orbit balls were so frustratingly irregular -- methinks you could get away with a pitching machine-style pair of wheels with these balls. (Prototyping is yet to come for us on that score!)

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

A large pulley such as used on a swamp cooler (it's a southwest thing), and a V belt is how we did it in 2009. Worked great. We used ball bearings that fit in the pulley over the belt to support the turret.

here's a partial view of how it was built. I think it was still a prototype at this stage, but the same turret drive/support parts were used on the final version.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

I had this idea, which our team is currently working on, where you make a half-circle of wireframe pipe that can fit the ball from under the 'bot to the top, then put at the center of the circle a wheel with prongs sticking out of it that move the balls around the loop (the prongs stick through the tube). Does that make sense?

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

If you can deal with the turret having a limited range of motion, your "sprocket" can be a wooden disk with chain bolted to the outer edge and driven by a smaller sprocket. You can either have the chain make a typical loop around the driving sprocket, or just have the chain in a circle around the disk and drive it as if it were a gear.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

I heard a good one today from my students - take small sprockets of the right pitch, cut them in half or quarters, and attach them around the turret to simulate a large sprocket. No reason a large sprocket needs /every/ tooth. :]

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

In 2009, in the game lunacy one of the teams i watched used these things called Polycord. They are essentially plastic bands that are put around rollers at either end. These cords work extremely fast and efficiently. Look up the Team Cyber Blue from 2009, or 1114 from the 2006 competition.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

If I am understanding correctly what it is that Alan is suggesting, you could also apply a torsion spring to the axis of the large wooden disk, wrap the chain around almost the entire disk and come up with other creative ideas to get close to 360 degrees of motion.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

Otherwise know as a vortex lift, it takes up space. Poly-cord on a vertical conveyor belt is lighter and doesn't require and special bent material.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

We didn't use any special bent material to make our "vortex", the sprinkler tube comes from Home Depot in helical coils.

Polycord is probably a good solution this year, since we don't need to store many balls.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

High friction belts under tension does wonders for all kinds of movement.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

1747 did that in 2009 with great success...

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/32733

(the turret motor is in the back; a globe)

we used a large AL lazy suzan and cut and drilled washers to interface the chain to the turret. the chain was nylon. the only time it failed was when some programmers were using it to test the new classmate in 2010... the chain became derailed... easily fixable.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

In 2005, Team 401 powered a turret by drilling holes on the top of a circular disc at a fixed distance apart. The distance between holes matched the pitch between the teeth of a sprocket (used normally to drive chain). The sprocket was set perpendicular to the disc and driven with a motor. It was kind of a poor man's gear and worked great. The best part is, you can make it with just a drill press, although a jig to help you make a consistent set of holes helped a lot. Just make sure you do your math correct and end up with an whole number of holes comprising your circle. Definitely measure three times, drill once.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

or just limit it to a set amount of the circle...

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

Belts, yes belts ... we're on the same page. I've been searching through online catalogs, and there is an astounding number of different belts in the world.
For our vertical ball elevator, we would be looking for a seamless flat belt, about three inches wide and spanning a distance of about three balls. So the length of the belt would be a bit more than 4 feet, depending on the pulley diameters.
Can anyone lead me to a specific supply and catalog page for such a belt?
Thanks!

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

We used a friction drive in Lunacy: roughtop plaction wheel against a friction-taped lazy susan. This drive worked well (better than the hopper screw itself) and was nice if anything ever got jammed in the intake.

Re: Using a turret? Whatre your ideas on elevator design?
 

Our team during the 2006 season was able to make an award winning rotating turret (mentioned in a F.I.R.S.T. book) that was able to spin 340*, and tracked the target. This was extremely hard to make, taking almost 4 weeks of build to perfect the movements, and when it came to competitions, our drive team was working against the robot. While our drivers tried to line up for shooting, the bot would turn the turret to far to either side. We decided this year to have a stationary shooter and use the drive system to align our shooter.