Is anyone familiar with any inexpensive hooks that can lock onto the hanging bar with no actuation?
Or better yet if you have seen or are willing to share a clever and simple design for one that can be made in house.
Two question mark shaped plates cut out of ~1/8" aluminum plate, bolted together with several standoffs. This allows for a passive “over the top” hang pretty easily without any actuation or anything like that, and you can tie your hanger string to the standoffs.
Try searching for snap hooks and carabiners.
Here’s an example. At 70# working load, you’d need two to lift most robots, but you’d probably want that for stability purposes anyway.
A strong carabiner would work.
We used part of an old AM14U chassis front plate as our hook.
The design I was going with uses ATV tow hooks, that will be machined by a sponsor to screw onto the threads of our pneumatic cylinders. The model we’re machining:
We’re unsure how much the rod will rotate in the cylinder, but the weight of the tow hook should keep both hooks in the same direction.
We have these from 2013. When the cylinder fired, the bar pushed the hook bottom causing them to rotate. Once latched they can’t unlatch without some human assistance. Just like Chris mentioned.
ours is just a plasma cut question mark made out of .125 5052 aluminum plate.
It is about 5/8 wide where we attach the kevlar cable and about 1 inch wide where it goes over the bar. We only use one. Works like a charm.
If you do have rotation, a piece of flat bar between the two hooks mounted to the pre-drilled holes in the hooks would keep them oriented in the same direction. This bar could be plastic or fiberglass; it doesn’t have to bear a significant load.
We bent our own hook(s) out of 1/4" cold rolled steel rod. It was plenty strong enough when cold formed. If you heat it to bend it, it becomes soft and won’t hold up.
Here’s what we used Obviously we ground down the sharp points. They are fantastic and cheap too!!
Surely you [STRIKE]joust[/STRIKE] jest?
Let me star this by saying team 5980 has never had any problems with their hooks. Team 5980 uses belay hooks that a climber would us. We bought big ones at Lowe’s for 2 dollars a piece. We cut them in half and they fit perfectly on the bar. Shoved them into our scissor lift and they work great. Good luck with your search.
Here is our hanging mechanism. We just bought some assorted carabiners from Lowes or Walmart then just cut them to fit. If you are using more of a winch you might want to use something else, not sure.