I am thinking of using an FRC style box tube elevator for this year’s centerstage game for the lifting of the robot on the rigging, as well as for the placement of pixels, how would we go about doing that?
This isn’t exactly what you’re asking for, but the Anymark climber in a box could be a pretty good option for you:
As far as actual elevators multiple companies sell them:
I’m not sufficiently well versed in FTC COTS rules to know if you could actually buy one of these and put it on your robot, but they’re all pretty good examples to look at to either build a copy or design your own.
from what i understand, we can use it if it has only one degree of freedom. it seems like we could as a Linear Actuator is defined as: a single rotary input results in a single direction linear output
Yes I agree that in theory it should be legal, but do know that all those kits linked above are designed around FRC motors and are at the FRC scale.
Besides FTC kits like the Gobilda Viper slides, there isn’t really a tube-based kit like these FRC ones and thats because the forces/loads in FTC are so much smaller.
Perhaps you could design a custom thing around your manufacturing resources but using the designs of one the FRC telescoping/elevator kits as inspiration: just scale everything down.
Example, a 1/2 x 1/2" tube sliding inside of a 1" x 1" tube would probably work for FTC.
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Thankyou! we are trying to combined the lift and the elevator, as we have only 4 spare motors to work with
I coach 3 FTC teams, and (whatever the teams actually decide) I’m looking at the Compact Linear Slide Add on Stage Kit - AndyMark, Inc (which uses MISUMI SAR330 slides). They’re compact and good teams use them.
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would those be strong enough to lift the robot? this year is diffrent, as rover ruckus we had a wall to help support us
Even back in rover ruckus, this was not a particularly common arrangement as you want speed for normal scoring and torque for the hang. One motor on each mechanism will be sufficient with good gearing choices. Typically for hangs, lead screw kits are common, but there are other valid approaches which may not even need a motor to actuate, like a servo-controlled spring system.
If you really want to do box tube, it has been done in the past, and AndyMark is releasing a kit for one soon as showcased recently by @Peyton_Yeung on FUN (30 minutes in): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI3n45vu70Q&t=30m30s
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Yep, we’ll [AndyMark] have 2 tube and bearing elevator kits (a 1 stage and a 2 stage) on the website for this season. Just waiting on production parts to come in. In the meantime, here’s a video of the 2 stage kit in action.
One thing to note is I’m using a spring to tension the down cable on the 2 stage kit. This will likely need to be removed if the intent is to hang or else the spring will stretch past its limit.
Also keep an eye out for the spring extend kits for teams to make their own telescoping devices like an arm or a something akin to a climber in a box.
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Your best bet in that case would be multi stage cascade lift. The main benefit in this case is that when the first stage is geared to an appropriate climbing speed, the other stages move much faster than the one responsible for climbing which means you can use one single speed gearbox to get a ratio good for both climbing and scoring.
For the actually support, my suggestion would be mgn9 linear rails. You can buy the cheaper knockoffs on amazon and don’t need to shell out money for genuine hiwin rails. Linear rails are much stronger and stiffer than any of the drawer slides on the market and have a similar extension per thickness ratio as misumi slides. The slightly higher weight is worth the extra stiffness. Custom machined plates to mount the rails to the carriages are required, however.