Quote:
Originally Posted by DeepWater
Madison,
The lift looks really nice. We have been mocking up a couple of different similar designs using gas shocks and I have a couple of questions. First, in your design what keeps the two tall pieces of channel from just bending over? Second, (this is more of a rules interpretation question) are you placing any material between the bottom two pieces of metal (channel? Box tube?) and the carpet? I ask only because we are wondering if we need to so ast to not violate <R34> (the no metal touching carpet rule). I guess it depends on what is meant by a "traction device".
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The force of the gas springs at the start of the lift is exerted entirely vertically. As the lift extends, some force is exerted horizontally. It's about 25% of the total force, or 30 lbs. per gas spring. I should have done elaborate amounts of FEA on the linkages to determine their behavior given that they're seeing unprecedented loads for FIRST robots, but I honestly didn't have the time. Instead, we're taking a wait and see approach.
The linkages themselves buckled under the load in our first iteration. This was redesigned to accomodate that experience -- if something similar happens to the vertical pieces, we'll just make it stronger.
I'm pretty confident that the bottom of the lift will not be considered a traction surface, but I've been trying to also plan for nearly all eventualities and we hope to have something available to us to coat the bottom should the inspectors require it.