A Simple Elevator

[AdamHeard]

Patrick.

The 80/20 and similar extrusions are a solid low resource way to make an elevator, but it is a great weight hit.

I'm not saying don't do 80/20, but just hoping people explore the "254 style" of custom aluminum w/ bearings and realize that it doesn't have to be an insane amount of work. It easily can be a day of manually milling (as ours was about a half day of manually milling for a single robot) by someone who knows their way decently on a mill.

In the end, whatever gets the most robot done in the time it needs to get done is the better option, but I hope people don't assume that because "254 did it..." or did something similar, that it is impractical for another team to do it.

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

There are many fastener locking solutions out there, but steer clear of split lock washers. I prefer nylock nuts and Nord lockwashers, personally. There is always safety wire and castle nuts for the supremely cautious.

You can always brute-force it and re-tighten critical fasteners after every match.

Why steer clear?

Often times on our robots, due to our standardization on #10-32s and our love of lightweight manufacture, we can never even get close to proper preload on a bolt before we destroy the parts clamped. In these situations the spring force of a spring lock washer is helpful.

I agree for properly preloaded joints they aren't the solution, but it's surprisingly rare that we can properly preload on our robots without going to impractically small fasteners.

[Taylor]

When we did our 8020 lift in 2011, we found it to be a very simple, machine-less system. I can't speak on behalf of all 8020 distributors, but ours was happy to visit our site and work with us on our design and what parts we'd need to create it. We had to do minimal (read: a couple dozen holes drilled) machining on the system.
8020 also extended a FIRST team discount to us.
Our 2011 robot was far and away the simplest and most effective robot we've produced in our eight seasons.