We are looking to buy one of the off the shelf elevator kits. I know Rev, Andymark, and Vex have these and there may be some others.
For those teams who have used them can you rank them 1-5 (5= best 1= poor) in the following:
Ease of use
Complete (ready to go with parts supplied)
Versatility
Toughness
Over all opinion
feel free to comment as well
thanks
We used the Andy mark elevator and it would repeatedly come of fixed of the rails. I doubt it was due to poor build on our side since the distance between the bushing and bearing was not that large. So if you end up buying an andymark elevator, get longer bolts so you can push the bearings out more
Not really a fan of the Andymark kit. We used it on our Powerup robot and it was not ideal. Even when constructed properly, it tends to be sticky and does not move with the smooth, reliable motion you want. We haven’t used the Rev extrusion lift kit and Vex doesn’t actually have a proper kit, just an adaption of their frame system.
Honestly, if you want to try an elevator, your better off using t-slot extrusion and UHMW bearing blocks (both of which you can buy from 80/20 or several other suppliers) if you don’t have the capacity to do what most teams that successfully use 1x2 tube do, which is make/machine their own blocks and other elevator systems. In any case, you’ll still need to rig your own drive systems for the elevator, since none of the kits come with that. If you’d like to see how our team did it this year for Deep Space (and very successfully, despite not having any machining capability), then take a look at this thread. What we did was as easy as building the Andymark system and worked far better.
This is correct, but it does work extremely well, though we only used it in a single stage with all plastic vex 1"x2" tube. It is called the VersaFrame Linear Motion Kit
For your rankings:
4 (It just requires you to drill and cut in 1x2 tubes, screw/rivet the gussets together)
2 (Requires parts from McMaster Carr, 1x2 tubes, gussets for the 1x2, and motor mounts. You spend more on the stuff other for this kit than the elevator kit itself)
4 (We used it in a single stage configuration, probably can do 2 stage if you model it like the WCP elevator. You can make it any size you want with any motor configuration)
5 (Never broke, only the 1x2 plastic tubes did. Driver smashed everything and every match the intake fell to deploy)
Overall, very nice for us since we invested in vex’s versaframe product line and works as intended for a single stage elevator.
If your going for 2 stage, I would look at the WCP elevator. Similar concept.
We very successfully used the greyt elevator from WCP for the 2019 season. The kit allowed us to make the best elevator we could given our resources (nothing but hand tools really in house this season). The only issue we experienced was with the method for connecting the drive chain to the 1st stage of the elevator. We had several failures of the small aluminum T bracket before switching to a custom steel one. While we thought we had spaced the versaplanetary appropriately, we aren’t 100% certain this failure wasn’t caused due to our design. We would hands down use this kit again should the game demand it.
Agreed, the kit is awesome, and the team I mentor used it for both 2018 and 2019. We encountered the same issue you did, with the plate continually bending and wallering out the holes in the bottom cross rail, we replaced it with steel, did a careful analysis and found the whole issue was if the gantry ever deaccelerated quickly at the two extremes of motion, with a bit of acceleration tuning and testing, we never had an issue again. Would highly recommend.
We are looking into v2 the kit for the upcoming season to keep ahead of inventory demands. Could you please send any issues you’ve had to me? (Rc at wcproducts Dot com)
The Andy mark elevator is very robust and can work well. Our complaints after running it all season on two robots was that the bearings and brackets are larger than other offerings. We used it in two stages without any issues. No racking or binding. It’s also a little heavier than other offerings.
Bearings will always have superior motion over slides of any type. Assuming both are made correctly.
80x20 or other styles of extruded aluminum are heavier than hollow box or tube, and an elevator is the last place you want weight.
The greyt elevator is a top notch light weight and flexible design that is very hard to beat.
Can backup that the elevator was great except the aluminum bracket for the chain.
We used the AndyMark HD last season and it is great. Very robust, handles some racking of the frame due to the rivets in the corner brackets getting loose after 2 district events and a DCMP. I’d give it a 5 all around except for weight, however I’ll take that weight given the strength of the system. We will definitely use it again in the future, as in the same parts we used this year, should the need arise.
I’ve also used the REV which I find less tolerant of misalignment and while the kit itself is heavy it needs their extrusion which makes it overall heavier. I’ve give it a 3.5.
I’ve also used the slides in 80/20 from a couple of different brands and they have much more friction than a bearing or roller style lift. I’d give them in general a 1.5 in part again because the use of extrusion makes the overall system heavy.
+1 for the Vex kit. As a team we wanted a COTS elevator this year. It worked like a charm, and the elevator itself never broke, even after the robot fell on it multiple times.
Having been gifted with a great deal of Bosch Rexroth extrusion (basically it’s metric 80/20) and various bits and bobbins to go with, we used extrusion with Delron bearing blocks on all of our elevators from 2007 through 2017, all of which worked well enough and came at the low, low cost of free…
But especially with the COTS elevator kits now on the market, I couldn’t recommend that a team looking to build an elevator go in the same direction–the bearing kits are superior in pretty much every way. Now that we’ve used and abused down to the last dregs of our Bosch stuff, we’re definitely not going back to extrusion/block lifts.
Elevator game round 3 confirmed.
Well no…
Fall 2017 we opted not to design an elevator… And it was an elevator game (GreyT was designed after kickoff.
Fall 2018 we opted not to update an elevator…
And it was an elevator game.
Fall 2019 an elevator is being redesigned… So it won’t be an elevator game.
Makes sense.
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.