[RMS11]

What is your compression? You say you are compressing to less than 5" thickness. Does the drill seem to be struggling at all?

Drill does not seem to struggle at all. We will be using a 550 and a 1:16 banebots transmission.

Have you tried other widths? 5", 7", 9"? Did this have an impact?

We were satisfied with this result enough to not try any other amounts of compression. Much less (~6" or greater) would have probably struggled to maintain grip.

Have you tried not having rollers in the middle and instead grabbing from two points on the side?

Yes. It is effective to an extent (pretty much as long as you are going fairly straight and the roller tries to grab the tube it will work.

Have you tried pulling your tubes out by hand both while the motors are running and while they aren't? Perhaps use a cable tied to the piece with a force gauge to measure your grip strength.

We have not measured the grip strength with a force gauge but we do plan to turn off the motors once we have control and rely on the friction of the system (both the gearbox, the chain, and the belt) to hold the tube.

Have you tried grabbing at an angle? Both relative to the floor and relative to the tube.

Works just as well, although we plan to be grabbing straight on most of the time as it is easier to line up.