pic: 6 speed?? Great in theory - lets see how it works!

[Rickertsen2]

If you had free reign to buy whatever you wanted, shifting this thing pneumatically would be very easy. With the parts available to FIRST, i would forget the idea of pneumatic shifting. I can tell you now that if you go that route and try to position a cylinder in that many places soo close together and still have reliable shifting it will not work. It would be much easier with something like a rack and pinion or leadscrew mechanism with a globe motor or similar. The one thing you need to watch out for if you use a motor is that you need to make sure that you are never stalling the motor. You will need to add a spring or something that will compress until the gears mesh.