[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

You'll likely want a ratcheting system to take the load before you do that....

I'm afraid that this season we're going to see a lot of shifting winches that work well at first, and then suffer a bad case of broken teeth and sadness.

Back in 2010, ratchet failure due to broken/gouged teeth was the biggest problem our robot faced (well, second-biggest; our ratchet-tooth-click-counter approach to setting the kicker power was probably the biggest). Our kicker was supremely powerful (could score from the rear zone), but I've always avoided similar mechanisms since then for just that reason. Disengaging teeth under that much force without damaging them is not a trivial matter.