Quote:
Originally Posted by lark95
We did not have problems with the SMC parts themselves. We did not stock spare parts properly and when we broke one of the solenoids by striping out one of the screw we couldn't find any teams that had any spare parts at competition. The reason for this thread is to find what other teams are using so that we can use what other teams are using for better support at competition.
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If you're using really really standard sizes (e.g. recommended cylinder for a COTS shifter or butterfly module), you might find a spare, but even coming off the Bimba voucher, there are several dozen combinations of stroke and diameter, so it is unlikely that anyone will have a match on hand. if you're using a cylinder that isn't on the voucher or recommended for a COTS subsystem, it's a long shot in the dark. We build "twin" robots to have one for practice and tweaking, and if nothing else, we always bring the pneumatic cylinders from the practice robot, and usually the compressor, solenoid valves, and other COTS parts.
We use mostly Bimba as well; their online CAD generator is great! Even though we didn't CAD our launcher last year, we were able to use the CAD to build a model of the cylinder we used to stretch the springs, so we were able to build the rest of the launcher to fit. This was essential, as our cylinders last year did not arrive until after stop build. These were custom cylinders ordered around mid-build season.