Lift on cart

[loomisman]

Teams using pneumatic lifts, how is your lift system designed? Our team is adding a lift to our cart and I could use some ideas.

[Alexander McGee]

IM me and i will give you some good tips. I work for a medical company (Stryker) as an design engineer for the test lab. We make hospital beds and stretchers and EMS cots. They are hydraulic, but I use pnumatic components every day. Hit me up.

[Timmyd]

i was actually designing one that had a scissor lift and you could raise and lower it with ether a drill motor or this old sowing machine motor i have haven't finished the design yet but once i do ill get you the inventor files

[Al Skierkiewicz]

I need to advise you that pnuematics are a bad idea for robot carts. They carry a fast response and little control for such a large and heavy object in such a small and confined space as a pit at competition. I know of teams that were asked to disable a pnuematic cart during a competition due to the danger to team members and other pits.

[sanddrag]

If you put in some good flow rate control, I think it could make quite a fine system.

[Justin Stiltner]

Team #388 uses a lift cart from HarborFreight that has been modified with a new suspensiopn and wheels, this provides us with 660lb lift capacity up to around 40" or so.. waay more than we need. The advantage of this is the hydrolics are all preengineered and reliable, we can carry pretty much anything we want on our cart includeing our crate 2 years ago, and its very controllable with an handwheel that opens the lowering valve and it will up to a maximum speed which is very safe. I dont have any pics of our cart at the moment but will post some if I can rember also check out the cart pics on this site, many good ideas. Also I think the HOT team (cant rember the number) uses an linear screw actuator system with a sissor lift however I think the weight limit is very low

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Timmyd

i was actually designing one that had a scissor lift and you could raise and lower it with ether a drill motor or this old sowing machine motor i have haven't finished the design yet but once i do ill get you the inventor files

A scissor-lift cart may seem like a good idea but there is always one disadvantage - weight. Even if the lift works fine, a heavy cart is usually a bad idea. Last year, our team tried to make a scissor-lift cart, but it ended up weighing around 80 pounds, so we scrapped it for a simple one. Remember, if your cart weighs 80 pounds + 130 pound robot + extra batteries = Way too heavy! If your team is going to the Championships, and you have to push a 200+ pound cart back and forth the quarter mile or so from the pits to the Georgia Dome for each match, you will really want a lighter cart after its over. Going with a minimalist approach to cart building is best.

[Foss@Team176]

in my opinion your options are either,(1)build a heavy cart with a sissor lift, (2)get a cheap dolly, or (3)attempt to make something new that no one has come up with yet. currenty myself and some other team members are working on option three, and have explored many options. Instead of a lift maybe consider making a table/cart... we might show our designs latter, if not you could always check it out when its done at our regionals. Currently i know we are going to the UTC.

[Jason Kixmiller]

If you have a pre-existing cart that works well, several hardware stores carry folding table legs (much like on folding tables, etc.) that are easily attached and require little to no technological know-how.

[Not2B]

I agree with the KISS method - Keep it Simple.

Instead of raising the robot, can you lower your chairs to sit while working on it? Maybe make some wooden rectangles with casters as chairs?

We have had one excess in the past - the robot stand on the cart is a lazy-susan from the hardware store. Let's you rotate the robot while working on it or loading/unloading.