[dtengineering]

Gee, you post a friendly video to share some inspiration with other teams and the repliers are so busy advocating eye protection and explaining why it won't work that they forget to say "Cool idea" and "thanks."

Cool idea. Thanks. Our team has been inspired in the past by videos like this, and I'm sure you're helping someone. And I'm pretty sure you know how to use storage tanks, too... but wanted to do this lift slowly and safely.

I see no reason why this couldn't be a very good way to lift up a level. Maybe you use it to go up level 1, maybe you use it to go up to level 2... but you can't make it to level 2 until you've conquered level 1... it seems a few posters have forgotten that. There is no rule requiring a climb to be done using a single mechanism, is there?

I think you could actually double the power of your lift by ganging up copious quantities of surgical tubing along with your pneumatic cylinder. Use air to extend the cylinder, strectching the tubing, and the tubing will help retract the cylinder. In fact, if it all fit inside your starting measurements, you could start the match with the cylinder extended, and simply vent the cylinder at the end of the match allowing the surgical tubing to do the lifting for you.

Oh... wait.... then you could use a second cylinder to climb the next level the exact same way...

For a faster acting mechanism we used pneumatics to launch the trackball in 2008. Inspired by videos and photos just like this posted by other teams, we would lock the cylinder in a partially extended position, pressurize it, then release it when it was time to launch.

Yeah, it used a lot of air, but man, oh man did that ball fly!

Keep up the good work... and thanks for sharing.

Jason