Portable Racks

[aksimhal]

Hi,

My team didn't get the time to build a practice rack during the build season, but we want to build one now in order to demo the robot at schools and for sponsors. We were originally going to make a partial rack that would be the regulation size 10 ft tall, and one or two legs wide, and use the materials suggested by first. Now we are thinking about making a telescopic rack that would collapse for easy portability. Has anyone else made somewhat portable racks, what do they look like (aside from what it's supposed to look like), and how much it cost to build?

Thanks,

Anish Simhal
Team 1123

[Beth Sweet]

I would be careful making it 10 feet tall. There are a lot of places you may demo that don't have ceilings that tall. However you end up making it, I would suggest having it so that it doesnt have to go all the way up to 10 because that was part of our problem, our rack didn't fit anywhere!

[Herodotus]

We used PVC tubes to create a rack we could break down and put up in around 15 mins. We found the light was too heavy and would bend the PVC but we corrected that by tying it down and eventually actually used a sort of "bow" to pull it straight.

It's hard to explain how we got it to stand straight so I'll see if I can get some pictures tomorrow. Some people may have invariably taken pictures of the rack we had at the regionals because it was often set up by the practice field and we would let other teams use it if they wanted.

[Chris Marra]

What seems to have worked for some teams is to use 2005 goals and strap a piece of PVC on the top. Really, anything with a decently triangular base which PVC will attach to is an ideal solution in my mind. (Collapsable is a bonus)

[Pavan Dave]

So I just had an idea about this. Make a basketball goal. Tear the top (basket) off and screw a spider leg on 3 sides 90 degrees apart around the circle. If you do it right, you can put one leg on each height on three different angles and it will be easy to fold up because all you have to do is turn the spider vertical and you can move it easily because basketball goals have wheels at the bottom. I will post a picture of what I am talking about soon if you don't get the idea. Otherwise, if you still have tetras, I hear they work great!

[=Martin=Taylor=]

We don't have enough room for a rack (our practice area is in a hall-way ) so we had to build something that could be folded up every day after practice.

We built this in less then an hour and it served us very well all season!



Basically its three spider legs bolted to a 2x4. When you want to set it up you just clamp the ends of the spider legs to a building or pillar. When you want to disassemble it you just take off the clamps and it folds up into a nice bundle.

Hope that helps! PM me for more info.

[Grant Cox]

When we demoed for the senator, we built a smaller structure that can barely be defined as a "rack." It was basically a rectangle of 2x4's with some additional supports on the ground (for balance) with two of the standard spider legs (low/mid) hanging from it. It worked fairly well for its purpose, and was easily transported from one place to another.

[Joohoo]

one way to just have a really easy place to score ringers is just to create a pvc pole that only has a base like a post in the ground. It isnt a rack but it would be very portable and a really easy fix.

[TKM.368]

Similar to what other people have previously mentioned. One of our mentors graciously built this for us at the last minute when we needed to go on TV last month. Sorry the screen caps aren't such great quality.