Weird Behavior - Vex Pro Ball Shifters

[tag_groff]

Originally Posted by Brian_R

Yes - if I recall correctly, tightening or loosening this nut can change how the coupler assembles relative to the piston.

We ended up using two of the stock pancake cylinders in parallel with a 3D printed coupler (graciously made available by user tag_groff of 4265 here ). This required us to mount the standoffs for the cylinder in new holes in the ball shifter, and make a plate to hold the pancake cylinders side-by-side.

Depending on the forces in your winch, these might still have trouble shifting. For TESTING purposes, my understanding is you can run these pistons up to 120 PSI to see if they have enough force to shift. This is equivalent to a single 1.5" bore cylinder at 60 PSI, which you could order after ship and swap out at competition.

Note that I'm just a guy on the internet - check all the safety stuff (pneumatic component ratings especially) before trying anything out of spec like this. Also, since this is well out of the expected usage of the ball shifter, be prepared for possibility of these big forces damaging the ball shifter over time. With our brief testing of 2 cylinders at 60 PSI, we haven't encountered any issues... yet.

Even though our team has moved away from a winching catapult, I am really glad to see that the work I did for this mod is being utilized by other teams. Thank you very much.