pic: 1747- Kicker Winch

[Steve G.]

What is the length of your pneumatic cylinder? What is the bore measurement?

[Bob Steele]

Be careful of calculating the frictional forces on the gear you are pulling.
Are you pulling a dog gear ??

We are using a similar system but using 2 pneumatics ... the dog gear winds the capstan and the tension is held by a ratchet and pawl... we then pull the dog gear with a pneumatic and release the kick with the 2nd pneumatic which releases the pawl.

Our design engineer thought that the friction in the dog gear would be too great to pull effectively with a short throw pneumatic.

good luck..
cool design..

We are winding with a Banebot transmission and a FP motor.

[Ben Martin]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

Are you pulling a dog gear ??

No, we are just disengaging a 50-tooth gear. We used parts from an old AM Gen 2 and an off-the-shelf ratchet to test the dog gear-ratchet approach, but like you said, the friction forces prevented the dog gear from disengaging. After trying a number of things (like beveling down the "teeth" of the dog gear), we switched to this idea.

Originally Posted by Steve G.

What is the length of your pneumatic cylinder? What is the bore measurement?

It is a 1.5" bore cylinder with a 1/2" throw.

[Lil' Lavery]

It's been a little while since I've seen a mesh-shifter in FIRST, and this is about as close as I've seen recently. Definitely cool, used to be a lot more stuff like this in FRC.