Convert 24v solenoids to 12v

FIRST General Forum
1

So now that we have a brace of 24v solenoids, anyone have good advice for converting to 12v for use on the robot? What are you preferred methods?

2

My preferred method is to trade them to another team who wants 24v solenoids, but has 12v.

3

Um.

4

Are you saying that is a description of your team?

5

Just a general observation.
We have a high density of teams around us and we trade between ourselves all the time.

If a team near you needs 24v solenoids, they may also be willing to purchase as trade, the 12v versions of the same from AndyMark.

Another option is to buy replacement 12v coils, but there is a cost associated with that. The coils are exchangeable.

6

Why are you looking to run 12v instead of 24v solenoids? The robo-rio accepts both, and our experience from beta testing is you want to run 24v due to brownout issues.

I know you can just buy the solenoid end plugs for the SMC solenoids, because we recently bought some to upgrade our 12v solenoids to 24v. I imagine you could do the reverse.

7

Perhaps you could send/sell/trade your unwanted 12v coils to them?

8

Do you have a part number/source for the individual end plugs?

9

Depends on the solenoid you bought. When we did it, we called up SMC and they helped us figure out what we needed over the phone.

10

Could you elaborate on the brownout issues?

11

The 12v solenoid power supply comes directly from the battery (un-regulated). When the battery voltage drops low, the solenoids don’t fire. This was also an issue with the C-Rio (we found that when our robot was under heavy load, our shooter would not fire and traced the problem down to this). The 24v solenoid power comes from a voltage boost that works down to lower voltages, so it isn’t impacted by low battery voltages.

12

Thanks for the replies. We got six 24v solenoids today in the first choice thing; we’ve always used the 12v and I was being lazy and asked y’all for advice rather than look up our options. I appreciate your help and am slightly embarrassed that I didn’t try to figure this out first. But, it does speak to how high I hold the Chief In my esteem.