Vacuums!

[Biff]

Kit motors and scrounged shop vac parts or serch for two stage vacume motors from surplus places. Remove motor guts, attach pulley, belt and kit motor, gear for between 15k and 28k (hope to keep current under 46 amps). Built two models last year. Never used them in competion.
Biff

[drewjones13]

We have a compressor taht refills the tanks whenever one empties so in theory we should be able to run the VG with tanked air.

[JustinMilne]

compressors are heavy and fittings are heavy
are you shure you are making the most wheight efficent decision?
wheight of part vs eficenty
a griper can be just as efficent

[DARKAGE]

How do you connect the vacumm to the pnuematic parts and pump.????

[Rick-906]

Has anyone else found that the suction cups really suck?
all puns aside... our team experimented alot with them and found that they were far from perfect, not only do they add a lot of weight, they take time to connect to the tubes [for the suction to build up] and are fairly easily knocked off the robot.
im thinking of trying the piston method as suggested above, since thats weight efficient and would probably be fairly powerful.
but i think custom suction cups are the way to go

[robogeek753]

Note:

The rules state that you absolutely never can and/or should reverse polarity on the compressor. If you do that the FIRST Safety Nazis will make you change it. Just use the vacuum pumps in the Kit (you can order more w/ cups for about 30$ from PIAB.com)

Don't reverse polarity on commpresors!!!

GO 753

[kmcclary]

Originally Posted by robogeek753

Note:

The rules state that you absolutely never can and/or should reverse polarity on the compressor. If you do that the FIRST Safety Nazis will make you change it. Just use the vacuum pumps in the Kit (you can order more w/ cups for about 30$ from PIAB.com)

Don't reverse polarity on commpresors!!!

GO 753

To add to that, OTHERS have already stated (I'm not trying it to verify!): IF you try reversing the compressor, due to the valving inside it is still a compressor! The thing you lose is COOLING. The fan is not blowing air properly across the fins anymore. The compressor overheats, and given enough time it potentially become damaged, or destroyed.

So again, do NOT try reversing the compressor!

(I'm not sure about that one team's claim of being able to use the compressor as a vacuum pump. I'm curious how they actually did that.)

- Keith McClary
Chief Engineer, Team 1502, "Technical Difficulties"