[Libby K]

Originally Posted by Drew4564

So the tapes actually tore away from the spool they were wound around? After my team's testing during build and first event, we only had one tape measure tear right near the hooks, and never had any issues regarding the spool. I also echo Mr. Lavery's questions.

Yes indeed. I'll see if I can dig some pictures of the breaks out of their Engineering Notebook folder, but they would break right before their attachment points on our spools. A pretty clean break straight across the tape measure.

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

What width and brand of tape measures were they using? Were the loads purely in tension, or was there significant torsion or shear?

They used Stanley FatMax measures - the widest we could find.

Almost entirely tension. We tried to keep them as free of torsion as we could, but the robot would twist a little bit when it hit the upper churros (FTC field). For our uses it was worth switching to another climber - I'm now a little bit wary of tape measures as pure weight-bearing, but love them as hook-delivery systems.