[EricH]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

For a short-term vacuum, this could definitely work. If you need vacuum for an extended period of time (more than a handful of seconds), you'll want something that can provide continuous vacuum, whether venturi, fans, vacuum cleaner, classic vacuum pump, or otherwise.

Depends somewhat on the application, and how much vacuum you're actually pulling.

I'll vouch that for short-term pickups without a lot of shock loading, it'll work fairly well. And it'd probably work for somewhat longer runs if you had enough. The problem is that FRC robots get rocked a lot... I've seen two teams attempt this in one season (it's been a while, though), with some degree of success. I was on one of those teams. We took the device off because, while it fit part of our strategy, it didn't fit the rest properly and couldn't hold suction in a shock situation. (It was replaced by a long piece of fiberglass pultrusion, actuated by the cylinder that had supplied the motion to the vacuum-generating one--lost half the job, kept the really important half.)