Inflating the Ringers

Technical Technical Discussion
1

There are lots of ways to inflate the ringers, but I forgot the air mattress pump at home and didn’t want to subject the team to mass huffing and puffing… and didn’t have a nice connection to fit up to the shop’s compressor system… so I was stuck.

Then I pulled a piece of tubing off one of the cylinders on an old robot… fired up the pneumatics system and stuffed the end of the tube into the valve on the ringer. A perfect… albeit a bit tight… fit.

The robot can inflate the ringer. How cool is that?

Jason

2

We used the same technique to inflate ours

3

You don’t need a special connection to fill it with a shop compressor nozzle. Assuming you’re using a nozzle that has one of those conical rubber fittings on the end. Just stick it in the valve and let it rip.

4

famous last words!

5

lulz.

I just do alot of… huffing and puffing. >->

6

Has anybody seen rules about how much the rings have to be inflated. (e.g. a psi value like for your care tire.)
or just blow them up untill the ‘feel’ right?:eek:
JS

7

I just blew ours up. It takes about 2 minutes, it’s really not a problem.

8

I don’t belive there is anything specific. Just get it feeling right. As long as it’s relativly smooth, you should be fine.

9

The tube is supposed to be inflated to 2.5 psi.

Here is the info and ordering information for more.

http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc/content.aspx?id=4060

10

Y’see, 1923 blew up our ringers by hand. It’s called the “who has the most lung capacity” method. It takes a little bit longer, and it’s WAY less cool, but it works. :stuck_out_tongue:

11

we inflated the rings with “lung power”, and later measured the pressure to be well under 1 psi, far from fully inflated.

12

Today the students inflated the rings to 2.5 psi, using the compressor from last year, a T fitting, and an old auto tuneup vacuum/pressure gage.

We all noticed quite a difference in how the rings behave on the test rack, and the size increased enough that our first design test manipuators didn’t work on them.

13

my team had a race between lung power and compressed air. We actually tied… It took 10 mins to find an appropriate nozzle to the school’s compressed air system… once we found it, it took about, oh, 45 seconds. The kid who blew it up was huffing and puffing long afterwards…

14

I was asked about the type of gage we used for measuring ring inflation pressure, and how it can be connected to the tube. Here is a similar gage sold by Harbor Freight, it includes some adapters to fit whatever size hose you have, or to fit in the ring inflation hole.

15

From the link MR. G posted:

“The maximum inflation for these items is 2.5 psi; the actual FRC-Competition specifications will be provided soon.”

2.5 PSI is the MAX not necessarily what FIRST will be using on the field.

-Lindsey

16

Thanks, I was going to mention that, I read the page last night.

Has anyone seen an inflation spec elsewhere? if not maybe it’s a question for Q&A?

17

I dont know if its a good thing or not, but our robots havnt had lots of “air pressure” features. SO we had our team blow them up.

Our students are full of hot air anyways :yikes:

18

I think for many designs it will be important that we know what the pressure is. I don’t think that field re-seters are going to have the time to re-inflate each tube after every match. Teams are going to have to work around that and figure out some way that their “manipulator” can adjust to each individual tube.

–dan

19

I think it would be a mistake to assume that the tubes will be inflated to a standard pressure, and design your manipulator with that in mind.

20

I was huffing and puffing …