What do you guys use if you something grippy. Looking to make team’s gripper grippier but I don’t know what to use.
The first things I can think of are roughtop tread and drawer cabinet liners.
Traction mats may also work, but I’ve never tried them on a gripper.
I can second blue nitrile roughtop tread. It also smells like oreos, which is an added bonus if you ask me.
We did use duct tape one year. Replaced before each match. Would not recommend, but is not the worst option I’ve heard of.
Do you have a photo of your current setup?
I recommend friction tape.
We used non-skid grip tape on our buddy climb lift bars this year. Bought it at Home Depot. It worked great. No one slipped off the back.
I imagine you could use this on a gripper as well. It would probably depend on what you were trying to grab.
I don’t but its basically like a bar clamp with a cylinder attached to it can clamp down hard
Linatex is my go to for grippy material. It is durable and does a great job gripping plastics and foams commonly used for FRC.
If you are looking for the cheap route, a roll of drawer/shelving liner from your local Walmart works great and costs nothing.
The absolute best grip material for cubes that I learned about this year is this stuff, but I think it’s a little fuzzy on the legality.
What did your team’s gripper use this year? It’s hard to suggest improvements if you don’t know where you’re starting from.
In general for 2018, the vast majority of teams converged on the AndyMark green (35A) four inch wheel for intake; it was both quite grippy against nylon and highly compliant (easily deformable). Where were you relative to this?
We tried to use one of those but we weren’t able to get those wheels so it never actually worked. We ended up switching to a pneumatic only gripper.
On carpet roughtop/wedgetop tread is the go to.
We used a pneumatic claw for cubes and found our best success was with a bicycle tire inner tube. Wrapped it around plywood paddles and taped/bolted it on. The rubber is extremely grippy and the compression it gives by leaving the whole tube intact and layered allowed it to conform to the pockets in the crate slightly. See this picture.
Grip tape works well for something rubbery (used them on rollers for belts in 2017). Not a fan on hard surfaces though.
For our gear pickup two years ago we cut these in half and use them on our gripper.
Vet wrap is cheap and easy to get. Farm stores sell it for horses legs.
You’ll have to replace it about half-way through the competition, but it’s really grippy.
Comes in many colors. Doesn’t need glue–it sticks to itself.
Hockey tape works pretty well. we used it in 2016 to hold the boulder in our robot.
Any difference between red and black other than color?
Many teams have their own “secret sauce” in this regard, some exotic material taht works pretty well most years. But the truth is you’re only going to figure this one out for sure by prototyping - trying out a bunch of different options based on educated guesses and not stopping the process until you have an acceptable gripper.
This kind of iterative prototyping is super important and is a big reason why the good teams are good off the bat.
That said, I’m partial to various kind of 3M “gecko” grip tape, silicone tape (F4), or fabric-backed polyurethane off McMaster - but it depends on the game piece and end effector.