Dropping Ramp Issues

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by Bill_Hancoc

If you had a spring could you maybe put it somesort of mechanical lock on the ramp so that i cannon deploy until you disengage it.

this is what our ramp folks are building, usign a gas spring to lift and deploy the ramp (it also cushions the fall, due to careful spring placement), with a small pneumatic cylinder to securely lock the ramp in the stowed position.

Hopefully it will all be built by the end of the week and we can make it work

the ramp surfaces are done, and the supports and such are mostly designed and ready to build.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Just an idea - if you already have an arm on your robot that's used to pick up the ringers / keepers, maybe you can incorporate that into getting your ramps out. Shouldn't be a problem if you use something like a Fisher Price + the kit gearbox, we found the speed of it to be about perfect and it still have a lot of power.

[bsbllpss]

springs are stored energy otherwise illegal
newbs

[Mister_Juggles]

You could always have the pin/lock idea (where the piston pulls away something blocking the ramp from falling) and just spin your bot in the home zone. As long as your bot can spin in a somewhat small circle, then you might be able to pull it off.