Can cables be exposed to a certain amount or do they have to be covered? If they have to be covered can you simply use electric tape or something weak? Thanks!
Do you mean electrical cables? Or some kind of cable used as a mechanical part?
Wires need insulation so they don’t contact other metal, but beyond that it’s whatever you want.
A cable (aka Wire Rope) used for some mechanical component, say for a winch, doesn’t need to be covered with anything unless there is a safety hazard where you want to put a guard over it to protect people.
Of course, those are my opinions, and my opinion is worthless at competition. I recommend reading the manual. If that’s too much effort…then you’re in the wrong competition.
I’m with Don, if you’re referring to electrical wires, they need to be insulated so as not to contact the frame, and color coded to denote positive and negative. Additionally, you’re only supposed to strip a certain amount to go into the WAGO connections on the distribution block ( 5/8", IIRC ). Furthermore, you should always strip only a little bit more than you need, otherwise you run the risk of shorts, and other nasty things.
If you’re referring to wire rope, aka aircraft cable, then no, you dont need to cover it, unless it could present a safety hazard, which might run you into some trouble with the <Sxx> rules. In the past 1075 has used an uncovered cable to drive our pneumatically-powered roller-coaster style launch track in 2008.
Like it was mentioned before. Always read the manual, yes it is big, but the main information about the game, field, and robot are in three chapters. What makes stuff even easier is that they have it then categorized in there. So for the wires just check the Electrical section on the robot.
As long as it complies with all rules (like being inside the bumper boundaries), and everything else it is up to what you want to do. Think about how exposed it is to other robots, moving pieces, access to being hit by game pieces. Does it risk getting pulled out or loose and cause you the inability to move or use a mechanical device.
But like mentioned before by others, on other threads, and as I said, always check and read the manual, Please.
Since we’ve worked with it before… using cable (meaning wire rope as others have mentioned above) can be great for some applications (read the rules to make sure it’s allowed, but it was in the past and i haven’t seen anything that says it isn’t). I would STRONGLY recommend buying it coated, however. The metal splinters you can get off an uncoated cable can hurt - and you can get them simply by brushing your arm gently across the cable, after your mechanism has been run a few times.