[kajeevan]

i know this is a lift tread but just on thing i want to bring up is that always consider arm before lift, always. proof of this is beachbot time and time again that simplicity kills all else. are team is finally making the transition and we already prototyped a strong fast arm for 09.

but to answer your question on materials we've been doing elevators every year expect for 06 and we've done custom lift frames to bosch (very expensive if your doing two). we've tried both spectra and steel cable. 1/8in steel cable uncoated works fine but the coated versions were a problem in terms of flexibility. spectra on the other hand is good if you take a lot of care in tensioning the it so it doesn't get cut up in anything. but my choice between the two would be steel cable. we used spectra on our lift this year and went through i believe 200f of the stuff. first spool had a breaking force of over a 100lbs and the other had breaking force of over 1500lbs. it was a bosch elevator forklift pulling up and gravity drop using 2 light senors for bottom and top limits so the spectra wouldn't come off the pulley. but the major problem would be spectra getting caught up every minute in the elevator because the string wouldn't tension at the same time that the elevator would drop. to keep string from getting caught in other areas we ended up using those key chain/card zippy things that act like tape measures pulling in. that had solved the problem most of the time. but if u want proof of elevator failer in action just watch some of our matches at waterloo you'll see the elevator go up and then get stuck either because it came of the pulley or getting caught.

but please please consider arm before elevator one because it'll take much less time to build second because its simple beyond belief and third its proven by 330.