newmatics....

[newatthis]

first competitors,
were can someone find new newmatic conponuts for there robot... the web site i need to find dimentions and different size newmatics... can Someone out there please help me... My first year at this so please help me...

bobby...

[Joe Johnson]

The pneumatics manual on the FIRST site is pretty good at showing you the ropes. It also has a generic sketch of the cylinders that you can use to create your own sketch of the particular cylinder (the ones you will order special for your robot)

I hope this helps.

Joe J.

Does nayone have a good tutorial/web page on hooking up the
control system to the pneumatics? In particular a discussion of
double vs. single solenoids, how to use 1 (Red/Blue)spike to control 2 cylinders, and the Pbasic code and hookup of the pressure switches and the compressor.

Maybe these are buried in this year's documents, but I haven't seen anything yet that I could hand to a rookie team and have them get a fully functional pneumatics system

[Nate Smith]

Originally posted by Dr.Bot
...how to use 1 (Red/Blue)spike to control 2 cylinders,...

This isn't in the manual with direct respect to pneumatics, but in Section 2 of robot.pdf it talks about using 1 relay to control two devices. Follow the instructions there, and it basically tells you how to use a relay the way you want to.

[Lloyd Burns]

Originally posted by Dr.Bot
Does nayone have a good tutorial/web page on hooking up the
control system to the pneumatics? In particular a discussion of
double vs. single solenoids, how to use 1 (Red/Blue)spike to control 2 cylinders, and the Pbasic code and hookup of the pressure switches and the compressor.

Double solenoids are connected per the diagam Nick suggests. The single solenoids should be coupled to separate spikes, unless you can (legally) tie the solenoids to ground and to one terminal each on the one (blue) spike. On the blue spike, if fwd and rev are both 0, the two terminals are grounded; fwd makes the M+ terminal high, rev makes the M- terminal go high.

Remember, you can pulse the double solenoids, rather than having to hold the current on: be careful of what happens when the power goes off - the valve will hold position, unlike one using the single coil valve.

Elsewhere someone has posted the code to contol the compressor with two pressure switches; leave one of the switches at its factory pressure, set the other to as low a pressure as you think you can stand, and use the code. When the low closes, start the compressor; when the high opens, turn off the compressor. The switches go to digital inputs using two wire instrument cable connected to the NC and COMmon terminal on the respective pressure switch.

[Lloyd Burns]

Originally posted by Lloyd Burns


The single solenoids should be coupled to separate spikes, unless you can (legally) tie the solenoids to ground and to one terminal each on the one (blue) spike. On the blue spike, if fwd and rev are both 0, the two terminals are grounded; fwd makes the M+ terminal high, rev makes the M- terminal go high.

And when you look in the manual, to check if it is legal, darned if First doesn't recommend the above scheme to save spikes. :-)