Elevators/ Forklifts

[Jeremiah H]

The discussion thus far is great, but I have two questions:
-How will these forks grab the bot to be lifted?
-What will prevent the lifted bot from falling off?
Just curious.

On another note, we are planning on using a forklift-inspired tube lifter that will grip the tubes with two sets of froks, one on top and one underneath, with each prong roughly 8" off of vertical center. We plan to be able to get two bots off the ground at the end of the match, but not by sheer force. We intend to make our lift on a pivot where it connects to the bot, and at the end of the match we will be able to rotate it downwards until it is level with the top of our bot. At this point the prongs that hold the tube will be resting on the floor to give the support for that end. A ramp will be deployed out the back, and two robots will be able to run up onto the long track resulting. We also will have a ramp out the side for that occasional bot that has a wide & short configuration rather than narrow & long as ours will be.

Any thoughts, anyone? JH

[Tatsu]

Originally Posted by razor95kds

Thanks for all the photos and links for the elevators!

Our team is edging closer to our decsion of whether to use an arm or elevator, but one thing that is limiting the elevator from becoming the design choice is the linear slides. Our team has found some slides, but they are too weak. We want a single tack elevator with a beefy slide that won't weaken if robot to elevator occurs by accident. We like the size of team 64's in 2005 but cannot find a slide of their size. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

We did elevators in 2005 using Igus drylin linear bearings.. You're welcome to come visit and we'll show you how we did it and such (we always like to talk to other teams)
here's some things I found were good and bad.

Good-
linear tracks are strong.. we cheeseholed the heck out of ours and we didnt have a problem. It did sway a little at the top but then again, we did go extremely high.

Much less programming involved, we could get the thing up and running with just dead reckon code.. good arms require good control code, dunno if thats a problem with you guys.

The things are robust.. theres not much that can go wrong with a good pulley system.

Bad-
Binding.. binding binding binding, makes it pretty hard to drag up the linear bearings (even with no load) we used 2 fisher-price motors in their plastic gearboxes attached to a spool.

Cables are annoying.. I can't stress this enough. cables have to be tensioned, there has to be a return cable.. its just annoying and unless you think it thorugh its full of surprises.

Good luck with whatever you choose

[USAF Capt. Sean]

As for team 1675 a scissor lift is becoming a better concept. We have figured out that when it is collapsed it should take up 6"-7" inches, but once opened it could reach upto a height of 88" inches. I personally think this is HUGE payoff. We have the machines to build one and hope to be testing it soon (Within the next week or so...) But we are still talking about drive types. So it might not be done at that point.

[xur2007]

Does anyone else have quick visual aid of a forklift system?? I think i'll be making a trip to a local Home Depot get acquainted to one.

[AndrewRibeiro]

Originally Posted by xur2007

Does anyone else have quick visual aid of a forklift system?? I think i'll be making a trip to a local Home Depot get acquainted to one.

You may want to ask you school Maintenance Shop. Ours has one and let us give it a look over to help with our design.

[GeoffP]

Here is a basic scissor style fork lift which is quite doable.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Zoheb N

Here are pictures of Team 118's elevator that we made for the 2004 competition. Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

That was actually 2005


http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc...t.aspx?id=1112
The presentation titled "Designing Competitive Manipulators: The Mechanics & Strategy" offers some details into how to possibly build an elevator.

[Zoheb N]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

That was actually 2005


http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc...t.aspx?id=1112
The presentation titled "Designing Competitive Manipulators: The Mechanics & Strategy" offers some details into how to possibly build an elevator.

OO sorry about that.. guess i am losing track of time already and it has only been 2 days since kick off

[Pavan Dave]

Originally Posted by Zoheb N

Here are pictures of Team 118's elevator that we made for the 2004 competition. Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

There are more pics on the robonauts website here if you are interested and there are some videos too.

Pavan.

[razor95kds]

Thaks for everyone's help and especially team 118 for the photos. I looked more into the 2005 robots and saw that wildstang's and team 64's forklifts were the kind we would want to build.

Also this elevator is used excusively for picking up INNERTUBES and not robots.

[Alekat]

A regular nylon strap is light and can lift quite a bit of weight. We used it to telescope our 15 pound arm. That was back in the days of the Van Door motor...

[Jesterofkings]

Our team did the math with alittle help from our mentors but according to our math with a machine 85% efficeint (Geared down by a multistage transmission and 2:1 sprocket ) it would take a round about .0284 horsepower to lift a 150 lb machine 12" in 12 secs with one motor. Our mth might be wrong so dont quote us lol. the question is your bot going to be balanced enough to hold another and is the other robot's weight going to be balanced? If your cant get the solutions for these you risk the chance of tipping urself and damaging your bot and other robots as well. Just my 2 cents of info to keep in mind.

[carbuff]

what about using pneumatic pistons how do you think they will work

[Katusha]

Originally Posted by carbuff

what about using pneumatic pistons how do you think they will work

We're looking into it [Team 168]. The only problem is that they weigh so much.

[Molly Stieber]

We have had lots of success with forklift style elevators, we used a system with cables, pulleys and bearings on our 2005 robot and it worked really well. It was pretty fast too. We have some pictures on our website, cooneyrobotics.com under the media part if you want to take a look.