The Spring

[ahartnet]

I agree that it's concerning that droswell's pictures seem to indicate little bounce (though they're static images of a static load) while Justin's video of a spring with identical specs shows that if the gear doesn't get placed at least halfway into the spring there's a good chance it's coming off, and if you knock the spring as you're placing it it might come off too. I hope it's not just due to a wide tolerance in the manufacturing of the spring.

I think this would also make me weary of any strategy that is dependent on a totally passive gear manipulator - where the human player is lifting it out of the robot.

[Justin Ridley]

I'm all for some video of a "McMaster" spring. If springs folks are getting from other sources behave differently, I'm sure we all want to know.
Thanks!

Originally Posted by Sparky Jell-0

I'm still not sure because some teams are claiming that their spring is complete opposite of what Justin's post showed and we just want to be sure. Hence asking for a video of the real spring that will be used on the field. I'm imply that Justin's post is wrong, but this spring has become extremely shrouded in mystery.

[droswell]

We'll put together a video shortly and post it.

[Gdeaver]

We received our Mcmaster spring last night and have not mounted it yet. With just playing with it, Would say the video is reasonable.

[Ty Tremblay]

Here are some pictures / videos from 319 playing with the spring at kickoff. Not sure what to take away from it, but the spring at kickoff seemed much sturdier than the one posted above.

4 GEARS on spring.

Dropping a loaded spring from ~2ft.

Some big oaf bending the spring by hand.

[Bob Steele]

I am just wondering where the teams are located that are receiving springs from McMaster Carr. We are in Washington and the response I get from MC is that they will be shipping in the last week of January.

Are you guys from a different part of the country?

thanks

[JR0405]

Here's my testing

[droswell]

Here's our spring testing video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4XiDYRmNRE

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

I am just wondering where the teams are located that are receiving springs from McMaster Carr. We are in Washington and the response I get from MC is that they will be shipping in the last week of January.

Are you guys from a different part of the country?

thanks

We bought springs within the hour after kickoff and got ours last week. I assume people who ordered later in the day/weekend are getting theirs now. If you didn't order until last week you're probably not getting one for awhile.

[s-neff]

Originally Posted by Cory

We bought springs within the hour after kickoff and got ours last week. I assume people who ordered later in the day/weekend are getting theirs now. If you didn't order until last week you're probably not getting one for awhile.

Ordered on Sunday of kickoff, still ~1week out

[idahorobot]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

I am just wondering where the teams are located that are receiving springs from McMaster Carr. We are in Washington and the response I get from MC is that they will be shipping in the last week of January.

Are you guys from a different part of the country?

thanks

Hi Bob

Miss being in the PNW.

We ordered at kickoff and got it today. We went for overnight, not cheap, but it took a week.

[XtremeFate]

We have ours and have found that it is in fact very flimsy. We initially thought it was only a spring instead of a rod to prevent robots from breaking it by running into the side, but now we think that the gear must be all the way "on" to stay on the spring.

[pavchag]

Originally Posted by Justin Ridley

I'm all for some video of a "McMaster" spring. If springs folks are getting from other sources behave differently, I'm sure we all want to know.
Thanks!

Justin,
I do not have a video yet, I will get one posted but we ordered the spring 3 of them 36in each from Essentra Components. All of the spring characteristics match the spring provided in the game manual, but it does look stiffer than what you have posted. I will try and recreate what you did tomorrow at our meeting and send you some videos. If you want I can also give you some of this spring and we can compare the ones you have and the ones we do.

I am also really interested in the difference!

[FrankJ]

Point of reference for those waiting on the McMaster Carr spring. I ordered ours the Monday after kickoff. It shipped out of the Atlanta wharehouse yesterday.

[ahartnet]

Our McMaster one came in today. I took it over to the Robonauts so we could do a direct comparison between the century one they got with identical specs to the mcmaster one as far as I can tell (https://www.mcmaster.com/#9664k68 vs http://www.centuryspring.com/extensi...ings-e-41.html) They behave very differently.

Foreground picture is the century one, background one is the mcmaster. Heading over to FIRST Q&A now to ask if they're only going to source the spring from McMaster. Aw man, just missed being the cheesy poof question: https://frc-qa.firstinspires.org/qa/255