Quote:
Originally Posted by Jared
This year was my first involved with any type of design, so I learned a bunch.
-When putting snap rings on 1/2" hex shaft, use a metric size. It's easier to get the snap ring on.
-It's really helpful to drill and tap a hole in a shaft you may want to remove in the future so you can put a bolt in it and pull it out
-Over center linkages are really cool too. We used one in our pneumatically loaded spring shooter. It let the pneumatic cylinder extend to load the mechanism, then retract without it firing. We needed this because the shooter fired faster than the cylinder got out of the way.
-Use surgical tubing as a shaft coupler for encoder mounts. This is an awesome way to deal with misaligned and weird sized shafts. You just slide it over the shaft and add a bunch of zipties.
-Don't use non sealed bearings, especially in places where junk is likely to get into.
-Vex Pro's chain and previous chain bought from McMaster have different master links. Vex Pro needs the "Heavy Duty" one.
As for the breaker freezing, how much do you really think it does? Is it considered unsafe and against the rules? I was hesitant to try it after I got in trouble for shorting the pressure switch to reload air tanks after a stopped match, but after a practice match with a cooled breaker, it reached normal temperature by the end. I don't think the breaker has enough heat capacity to stay cold for that long.
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I don't have the data in front of me right now, but when I ran some tests it was obvious how much performance gain there was in cooling the breaker. While cooling is significant by itself, cooling also has a much greater impact if you have back to back matches (ie Qualification/Finals) where the breaker doesn't have time to return to room temperature. When running back to back matches with the breaker chilled between matches, I think we saw a 3x increase in trip time, although I'm not 100% on the actual number. Regardless, it gives a definite performance gain.
As far as legality, it resides in a gray area and until the rules/GDC/Q&A explicitly state otherwise, teams will continue to use this for it's performance enhancing aspect