Vex Pro: Ball Shifter with a servo?

[Cash4587]

Originally Posted by Aren_Hill

Zip tied it in high gear

LOL. Nice.

[jman4747]

Personally I think it could be a good excuse to learn pneumatic systems and a good practical goal for teams who haven't used them before. If weight is your issue one or two plastic tanks and the smaller compressor should be no problem. That said making a bracket for a servo to replace the mount for the cylinder doesn't seem hard at all as I look at the CAD. One thing I haven't seen however is the potential use of solenoid actuators for shifting and that might be something to look in to as a pneumatic alternative.

[Cash4587]

Originally Posted by jman4747

Personally I think it could be a good excuse to learn pneumatic systems and a good practical goal for teams who haven't used them before. If weight is your issue one or two plastic tanks and the smaller compressor should be no problem. That said making a bracket for a servo to replace the mount for the cylinder doesn't seem hard at all as I look at the CAD. One thing I haven't seen however is the potential use of solenoid actuators for shifting and that might be something to look in to as a pneumatic alternative.

Interesting thoughts. My team has all the pneumatic parts needed for a whole system but didn't see the need because we would have only needed it to push a disk into our shooter wheels. We opted out of that and used a vex motor instead. It works much better in my opinion and is far simpler. We also thought about it and we really didn't need to do a pneumatic system to do well in this years game despite the many things we could have used it for. Even thought the weight is not an issue it's the fact that we have to add a whole system to our bot to do things we can do without it. Are all solenoids legal? That might be something I will have to look into doing to shift since I don't see my team using pneumatics anytime soon even with it's possible gain. Unless they make sense in next years game.

[MichaelBick]

Originally Posted by Cash4587

Interesting thoughts. My team has all the pneumatic parts needed for a whole system but didn't see the need because we would have only needed it to push a disk into our shooter wheels. We opted out of that and used a vex motor instead. It works much better in my opinion and is far simpler. We also thought about it and we really didn't need to do a pneumatic system to do well in this years game despite the many things we could have used it for. Even thought the weight is not an issue it's the fact that we have to add a whole system to our bot to do things we can do without it. Are all solenoids legal? That might be something I will have to look into doing to shift since I don't see my team using pneumatics anytime soon even with it's possible gain. Unless they make sense in next years game.

Pneumatics has a tons of uses. While you can do things in other ways, I find that pneumatics makes a lot of mechanisms simpler. Basically anything that is 2 position(and some 3 and 4 position stuff) is usually easier to do with pneumatics. It's one of the easiest ways to make complex mechanism with very little resources.

[jman4747]

I would say always leave yourself as many options as possible. The vary nature of the challenges we face each year constitute being able to use every tool at you're allowed. Even if you have no intention of using them the learning experiences and extra team building alone could be worth it.

As for solenoid actuator rules, "Electrical solenoid actuators, no greater than 1 in. stroke and rated electrical input power no greater than 10 watts (W) continuous duty at 12 volts (VDC) Unlimited" FRC Game Manual 2013

[magnets]

Electric solenoids probably aren't a great idea for shifting, as they will burn out if they are held in the same position for a long time. Also, I don't think that a 10W electric solenoid will have enough power to activate the shifting mechanism.