Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Meyer
We used 4 gas struts that were used with a reverse block and tackle system to pull ~36" of rope. It wasn't as easy as it looked. It took us 3 design iterations to get the pull force and the amount of rope pulled right to get a legal hang. It was also huge, being roughly 4" x 6", starting at around 21" and expanding to 36" in length within the frame.
We were just laughing about this the other night as the energy we used to hang actually came from a student. It had a giant crank we used to just pull on the hang rope until the struts were compressed, then just re-latched it.
It is a tremendous amount of stored energy, and must be treated with great care. The benefit of gas struts is they only release that energy relatively slowly though, so it's not too bad. We buried ours inside the frame and latched it with a cross-bar and car trunk latch.
The thing about hanging in 2010, was that it was of such a low point value that it only made sense to do at the last second. Roughly the equivalent of if scaling was only worth 2 points this year. Also, my interpretation of the rules make it so that it wouldn't count. I think the final explanation will be that you have to be up at the end of the match and stay up for 5 seconds for it to count. You really need something like that to be able to judge it, otherwise people would just let their motors back drive at the buzzer.
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Sounds like a good Q&A question. The 15 points for the hang feels to me to be weighted about the same as the hang was in 2010 in comparison to the rest of the game.
I'm working through a few designs in my head of how to make this work and it just sounds complex to develop, especially in comparison to the design we have currently mocked up.
So the systems involved were essentially: something to extend the climber, something to release the gas springs, and a way to crank it all back in safely.
Am I missing something?