What is the most efficient way of building an elevator lift?
Certain things are given:
use pulleys
keep things on lift balanced
least friction is the best
generally everything learned from building a multi-stage elevator lift in VEX can be carried on to FRC
The question is what types of ways are there to build an elevator lift?
On our previous robot from 2005, we just had the two towers connected to two long bars of extruded aluminum with a large shaft going down the bars and a bolt on the two towers going through the large shaft to keep the bars in place. The pulleys were powered by two FP motors with a gear ratio of something like 128:1. I wasn’t part of the team back then, but from what i’ve heard, and from some messing around with it, it seemed to go up relatively fast.
For this year, since we decided to go with an elevator lift, we were considering using the linear slides given to us with the KOP, from “igus”. They’re extremely smooth and stable. The only problem we for-see is the issue with the sliders having friction problems transferring from one rail to another. Having never worked with them before, or better, any elevator lift in FRC, what methods are there of creating a extremely fast elevator lift.
Should we craft our own? Or use parts that we can order/already have?
What is everyone’s thoughts?
It may seem like a “everyone knows” topic, but being that it is going to be our lift for this year, we want to know everything we can haha.
Well your looking at linear motion. You want linear motion. There are seperate ways of doing this:
Actuators! Some actuators are actually designed for linear motion such as pneumatics and linear servo actuators. Now, if your lifting off the floor, linear wouldn’t work because it would get in the way of anything in the elevator or the elevators path.
Motors: motors, though circular motion, can be converted to linear with common things like a rack and pinion. All have their downsides, but when doing an elevator with a power source that’s out of the way, a circular to linear conversion is the best considering if you engineer it right, it could scale the whole 5 feet maximum (or 84 inches depending on your side of the field). I don’t know how to do this, we trashed the elevator details for other details, lol try googling rotational to linear.
Speed, RPM is what you need, but for strength (countering gravity), torque is the best. I would stay away from Igus because their parts are known to be flimsy and break easy. I wouldn’t do conveyor either because it can jam easy. It’s a true engineering problem which I stay away from, lol but there are LOADS of options.
Rob, he’s looking at an elevator lift’s construction, not motion. (If motion is what’s being considered, it’s hard to beat FP motors with stock gearboxes running a cable system via winch.)
I’d look at 80-20 and their sliders–or, better, 80-20 and 357’s sliders from 2007 (see the Behind the Design book from that year). It’s worth a look.
Then there’s the C-channel and roller system. Take a C-channel, put a roller in one end (roller type is up to you, but a Delrin block might work). Make 3 more, set them up in pairs so both rollers in a pair are inside C-channel and the rollers are at opposite ends, then link the outside C-channels to each other and the inside C-channels to each other. Need an extra stage? Make 4 more channels, but weld the extra four back-to-back in pairs. (330’s favorite lift method from 1999 to 2004.)