Minibot Deployment Brainstorm!

[Nemisis]

My teams came up with an idea and are still building the minibot and well, we sorta overlooked a key element... Deployment!! So I'm curious what everyone else has thought of or even created!! What do You and your team think?

Thanks in advance!

[Andrew Zeller]

My team is going to be using the kind of slider that you have on your garbage can that goes in a cabinet. It works really smoothly and we are thinking of pairing it up with a scissors-type mechanism propelled by a pneumatic cylinder.

[Grim Tuesday]

We are using a set of sliders, similar to the ones used on keyboard slidey trays, pushed out by two pneumatic cylinders.

They arent as smooth as we would like, but oh well, they are already bolted to the robot. Plus, we have plenty of grease...

[Nemisis]

Originally Posted by boarder3512

My team is going to be using the kind of slider that you have on your garbage can that goes in a cabinet. It works really smoothly and we are thinking of pairing it up with a scissors-type mechanism propelled by a pneumatic cylinder.

Ah nice! thank You for the Reply! Our team thought about using a pneumatic cylinder for that too, however we've already got two being used, one to raise our arm and the other for the grabber at the end... and with using a single small compresser, we dont really want to use any more cylinders. We're using the largest cylinder that Bimba makes! i think its like 2 feet long nearly! lol Thank You again for sharing!

[Nemisis]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

We are using a set of sliders, similar to the ones used on keyboard slidey trays, pushed out by two pneumatic cylinders.

They arent as smooth as we would like, but oh well, they are already bolted to the robot. Plus, we have plenty of grease...

Lol very nice as well! It doesnt always have to be exactly smooth as long as it gets the job done right? lol We learned last year with a kicker idea that grease always helps! Thank you very much for your reply!

[klmx30302]

Out deployer uses 2 pistons, one to push the deployer out, the other to deploy the minibot. We have prototyping videos (only using the deployer) on my youtube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/klmx30302 I would post individual links but I have 10+ vids of deployer testing.

[Nemisis]

Originally Posted by klmx30302

Out deployer uses 2 pistons, one to push the deployer out, the other to deploy the minibot. We have prototyping videos (only using the deployer) on my youtube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/klmx30302 I would post individual links but I have 10+ vids of deployer testing.

Hmmmmmm! Interesting, very nice indeed! thank you for the reply! im going through the videos now! thank u for sharing!

[wjr1965]

There has been some buzz about trying to standardize minibot deployment so that teams can get points for "coopertition" by lending their minibots to other teams. Deployment standardization would permit this to happen more easily.

[Nemisis]

http://www.youtube.com/user/klmx3030.../9/b5Wf1COZ9Js
I like this one! thank you so very much for the ideas! not trying to be a thief or anything! lol but i really am impressed by your deployer! thanks again

[Andrew Zeller]

Originally Posted by Nemisis

Ah nice! thank You for the Reply! Our team thought about using a pneumatic cylinder for that too, however we've already got two being used, one to raise our arm and the other for the grabber at the end... and with using a single small compresser, we dont really want to use any more cylinders. We're using the largest cylinder that Bimba makes! i think its like 2 feet long nearly! lol Thank You again for sharing!

My team's arm is raised using a winch powered by a motor, so we will use three pneumatic cylinders- a tiny one for the grabber, a small/medium sized one for the minibot deployment system and a medium sized one to push our forklift past the bumpers (check out this post http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=90804 ). We do have quite a few small air tanks on or robot- we'll really be pushing the weight limit. My team got that huge Bimba one as well. We were thinking of using it for the minibot deployment because it was so long, but it was way to big, heavy, and inefficient.

[Nemisis]

Originally Posted by boarder3512

My team's arm is raised using a winch powered by a motor, so we will use three pneumatic cylinders- a tiny one for the grabber, a small/medium sized one for the minibot deployment system and a medium sized one to push our forklift past the bumpers (check out this post http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=90804 ). We do have quite a few small air tanks on or robot- we'll really be pushing the weight limit. My team got that huge Bimba one as well. We were thinking of using it for the minibot deployment because it was so long, but it was way to big, heavy, and inefficient.

Hmmm nice forklift! not to sound dumb... but do u have some kind of grabber on the end of it to retrieve the tubes?

[Nemisis]

Originally Posted by wjr1965

There has been some buzz about trying to standardize minibot deployment so that teams can get points for "coopertition" by lending their minibots to other teams. Deployment standardization would permit this to happen more easily.

That would be really smart wouldn't it? it would be sorta interchangeable am i correct? that way more than one type of minibot could be deployed from a single deployer? Rather ingenious!!

[Nemisis]

Originally Posted by boarder3512

My team's arm is raised using a winch powered by a motor, so we will use three pneumatic cylinders- a tiny one for the grabber, a small/medium sized one for the minibot deployment system and a medium sized one to push our forklift past the bumpers (check out this post http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=90804 ). We do have quite a few small air tanks on or robot- we'll really be pushing the weight limit. My team got that huge Bimba one as well. We were thinking of using it for the minibot deployment because it was so long, but it was way to big, heavy, and inefficient.

Yeah! hey me and a friend were talking on FB a second ago and he had an idea... What if our team used 2 compressors? What if we used 2 completely separate systems for the Bimbas? one for the large bimba then another for all the rest of the smaller ones?

[Nemisis]

I apologize for the tardiness of my posts... for some odd reason the last two I've posted, it popped up and said that they would be posted as soon as a moderator had approved them.I'm Confused!

[Hawiian Cadder]

i believe what we intend to do is push the robot out, and then rotate the whole robot with the minibot on the end into the pole, that way the most power full motors, in a relatively ideal setup, will deploy the robot.