Hello everyone,
Everyone has had some time to digest the game and start thinking about mechanical solutions. A lot of teams have come to the realization that one of the best ways to climb or lift cubes high in the air is an elevator (think of something like a forklift). These mechanisms were commonly used in 2011 and 2015 with great success.
Arguably the hardest part about building an elevator is working out the roller/bearing arrangement. This is especially the case for teams with limited precision machining capability. Competition Robot Parts has an off-the-shelf solution for elevator rollers that can be found at this link: http://www.competitionrobotparts.com/product-category/elevator-kits/
CRP’s product has the least number of moving parts of any elevator bearing kit on the market, takes up the least amount of space on your elevator (leaving more room for subsystems), and is the lightest solution available.
These kits have been used on many successful robots in the past few years. Countless robots featured these rollers in 2015, and they were very popular for climbing mechanisms in 2016. The team I mentor (team 5413, “Stellar Robotics”) used them for a very fast climber that year. A match video can be seen here. The climb sequence starts at about 2:10. 5413 is the tall blue robot on the red alliance.
Complete CAD of 5413’s robot (including the climber and PTO winch) can be found with their 2016 CAD/code release. Here is a link to the STEP file of the robot: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6wvKR2nX0TdRzNYOXQxQ1NRVGM
These elevator rollers are robust, easy to put together, and have withstood the beating of multiple competition seasons on many teams.
All of CRP’s products are in stock and shipping now. But hurry, these things are selling fast!