Need some help with forklifts

[R.C.]

Hello Cd,

I was wondering what material did you use to pull your forklift mast up and down. Last year we used fishing line and that did not work very well. Can you please put a link to your material and we were thinking of using cable? Also could you include pics of your system.

Thanks,

Rc

[Andrew Schreiber]

We didn't use a forklift but our feather was driven by steel cable which might be an option for you. Word of warning if it has plastic coating on it that will peel off LONG before the cable fails so you may want to strip it off in the part you use to secure it down. We were useless an entire match due to striping that plastic off and not being able to raise our elevator which covered our shooter.

[Madison]

We used 3/32" diameter uncoated steel cable for all stages of our lift. We initially worked with 150 lbs. test fishing line, but it stretched far too much to be useful.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by rc_cola1323

Hello Cd,

I was wondering what material did you use to pull your forklift mast up and down. Last year we used fishing line and that did not work very well. Can you please put a link to your material and we were thinking of using cable? Also could you include pics of your system.

Thanks,

Rc

228 has used 25 pitch roller chain on our 2007 elevator and Spectra cable on our 2005 elevator.

I'd also like to work on a design that uses timing belts sometime.

[R.C.]

Originally Posted by Damien1247

We didn't use a forklift but our feather was driven by steel cable which might be an option for you. Word of warning if it has plastic coating on it that will peel off LONG before the cable fails so you may want to strip it off in the part you use to secure it down. We were useless an entire match due to striping that plastic off and not being able to raise our elevator which covered our shooter.

Originally Posted by M. Krass

We used 3/32" diameter uncoated steel cable for all stages of our lift. We initially worked with 150 lbs. test fishing line, but it stretched far too much to be useful.

Originally Posted by artdutra04

228 has used 25 pitch roller chain on our 2007 elevator and Spectra cable on our 2005 elevator.

I'd also like to work on a design that uses timing belts sometime.

Do you have links of where I can buy these products, thanks guys for your help.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

Two #25 roller chains for first segment.

Two 1/16" steel cables from ACE Hardware for the carriage segment. We never broke or stretched these cheap cables. They had springs attached to one end that allowed them to stretch when the carriage reached the top.

Can't beat ACE!

Picture.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by rc_cola1323

Do you have links of where I can buy these products, thanks guys for your help.

Look through "the usual sources": McMaster-Carr, MSC Direct, Grainger, or Small Parts.

25 pitch roller chain is easy to purchase, although Spectra (sometimes called Dyneema) cable is a bit harder to find. I prefer Spectra cable to steel cable; 7/64" Spectra cord has an ultimate breaking strength of above 1,000 pounds, it doesn't stretch any appreciable amount, and it's a lot lighter than steel cable at only 0.3 lbs per 100 feet. The only real downside is that it costs $1 per foot.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

228 has used 25 pitch roller chain on our 2007 elevator and Spectra cable on our 2005 elevator.

I'd also like to work on a design that uses timing belts sometime.

I like spectra for a lot of things because it's so light, flexible, and relatively cheap, but we've discovered that it's pretty annoying for telescoping lifts and such. Spectra has pretty severe creep, which means that it slowly, permanently stretches when it's under load, especially a high load. So any lines that you pretension are inevitably going to get loose as the season progresses. I've since come to appreciate Vectran. It has a lower modulus than spectra, so it will stretch more under load, but it's approximately a heck of a lot more flexible and lighter than steel cable of similar breaking strength, and it has zero creep. Spectra is best purchased from kite shops:
A Wind of Change
Windstar Kites
Vectran lines are available at sailing shops:
Mauri Pro Sailing

EDIT:
Art, you're being taken advantage of if you're paying $1 a foot for spectra if you like it that much. See my links above. Buying in bulk should get you spectra for half that much.

[techtiger1]

1251 had a lift system this year we used 1/16in thick steel cable and UHMW plastic pulleys with an 1/8th in grove to life our elevator up. The motors were the small and big banebot if my memory serves me corretly and don't quote me on this rs 440 and 550 combined in a custom gearbox. The material for the actual elevator was 2*1 1/8in wall box alumnium. 254/968 has a spool thats really cool its like spring tensioned. I'm sure Cory, Sanddrag or Travis can tell you more about it and where to get them. Some other notes about elevators don't put all the pneumatic lines thru igus on one side if you have more then 4 lines it doesn't work well and run as much line as you can inside then out of the elevator to keep everything out of the way. This will save you alot of dispair and grief during the competiton season.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...=1251+robot+08

Hope that helps,

-Drew

[R.C.]

Where did you get the cable from??? I'll have to ask Cory or if he could explain it here with some pics, that would be greatly appreciated.

[David Guzman]

Originally Posted by techtiger1

The motors were the small and big banebot if my memory serves me corretly and don't quote me on this rs 440 and 550 combined in a custom gearbox.

We used the RS540 and RS550 motors. Also the cable we used was 1/16" stainless steel.

Our spool was 3" diameter rotating at around 400 RPMs.

[R.C.]

Jon Jack, do you have any pics??? Thanks guys for all the help and more ideas and pics would be helpful to team 1323 and a lot of rookie teams. So if you could post some pics of your robot here along with an explanation of how it works, it would be really helpful.

[kajeevan]

i know this is a lift tread but just on thing i want to bring up is that always consider arm before lift, always. proof of this is beachbot time and time again that simplicity kills all else. are team is finally making the transition and we already prototyped a strong fast arm for 09.

but to answer your question on materials we've been doing elevators every year expect for 06 and we've done custom lift frames to bosch (very expensive if your doing two). we've tried both spectra and steel cable. 1/8in steel cable uncoated works fine but the coated versions were a problem in terms of flexibility. spectra on the other hand is good if you take a lot of care in tensioning the it so it doesn't get cut up in anything. but my choice between the two would be steel cable. we used spectra on our lift this year and went through i believe 200f of the stuff. first spool had a breaking force of over a 100lbs and the other had breaking force of over 1500lbs. it was a bosch elevator forklift pulling up and gravity drop using 2 light senors for bottom and top limits so the spectra wouldn't come off the pulley. but the major problem would be spectra getting caught up every minute in the elevator because the string wouldn't tension at the same time that the elevator would drop. to keep string from getting caught in other areas we ended up using those key chain/card zippy things that act like tape measures pulling in. that had solved the problem most of the time. but if u want proof of elevator failer in action just watch some of our matches at waterloo you'll see the elevator go up and then get stuck either because it came of the pulley or getting caught.

but please please consider arm before elevator one because it'll take much less time to build second because its simple beyond belief and third its proven by 330.

[R.C.]

Yes, we have making arms for the last 6 years and we just wanted to test out the forklifts, thatz all. But we will be probably going for an arm. We loved the beachbots robot this year and last. Very nice bot guys. Congrats on winning IRI.

[kajeevan]

sry bout the rant type thing i didnt realize the situation