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Re: Bigger Compressor
As I mentioned in another thread, my feeling is that this year, pneumatics will work fine for "grabbing", but not for "lifting". The amount of work that needs to be done to stack totes and containers is pretty high, and the compressor just can't keep up with air demands.
I could be wrong, but you ought to at least do some power calculations. Be sure to derate the compressor's flow rate for the pressure it will be operating at, there is a CFM vs PSI chart for it somewhere. And beware that pneumatics is a rather inefficient way to do work, there is lots of loss both in compressing the air, and in the cylinders moving back and forth. There are tricks you can play to help, but it will still probably be marginal. We had an almost fully pneumatic robot last year, with a much lighter game piece, and had trouble with running out of air.
Speed will be vital this year for getting lots of points, you don't want to be waiting around for the compressor to build pressure.
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