Update 12/30: We can’t believe it is less than a week away from Kickoff! In preparation, we wanted to begin our first new product spotlight - Retention Bearing Hats.
Our retention bearing hats were designed in collaboration with Team 4488 who has been using a similar style for several years now. Unlike other options on the market, these are designed with an outer ring to provide teams with greater versatility on hole placement for the same cost.
As a few possible examples of added utility (provided by 4488):
(1) when prototyping, there is no need to worry about perfect 180 degree hole placement, you can just get the bolt in quickly;
(2) when polycarb gets stripped during a match, you can quickly drill and tap a new hole without having to take off the hat;
(3) when designing, belt or chain may be accidentally overlooked and a spot where you thought to place a retention bolt just no longer works, so it is nice to just be able to drill a new hole as opposed to making a new part.
To note, we also wanted to give teams better control over their purchasing decisions, so instead of offering them in packs of 2, 4, or some other quantity, we chose to sell them individually for the same per unit cost of the packs.
On the weights, that’s correct. The 75 is slightly heavier than the 240. However, it may depend on scale calibration. They are all approximately around 0.17 (oz).
Here is an example from this past years bot on our intake. These are a slightly different/older version of the hat collab with LAI but the red circled areas show the bearing hats there and how we had one bolt that was into the “threaded” hole but the second one we used the slot. We designed it to be for those areas were having the more “standard” degree offsets for retention just wouldn’t work necessarily or in the case of a polycarb intake if the polycarb got broken and your ideal location wasnt there anymore, you could still keep the bearing hat there and just drill a hold and put a bolt washer nut combo on there drilling in place. I can try to track down some more pictures if this doesnt answer your question.
As a quick update, we wanted to let teams know that we’ve updated all our product pages to include Onshape links. We hope this will make it easier for teams to incorporate our products in their design process.
Team 5675 has already used the bearing hats to help with prototyping. Very easy to work with and very quick to implement. I will have some pictures later. Thanks!
Since they were a late addition to our 2024-2025 product lineup in response to feedback, these will be available to purchase at the end of January (Week of the 20th or 27th).
We will keep teams apprised of their status. Know that we are working hard to get them to teams as quickly as possible.
With the end of week one, we wanted to take a moment to recognize the last member of Team Anvil for the 2024-2025 Season Team 2847 Megahertz:
Like with all of our teams, we are immensely grateful for their participation and collaboration this year, and we are so excited to see them compete.
End Caps / Tube Plugs
Finally, as a reminder, our end caps/tube plugs (0.0625" & 0.125" thickness) are available for purchase. However, they are moving quickly, so we can encourage teams in need to pick them up.
We are excited to have these in the hands of teams, and we hope both options will give teams additional versatility in form factor as well as strength.
Just paid the team a visit this past weekend, and the mech team is loving the reinforced pulleys. Now all we have to do is work down our 15+ backlog of 30T WCP pulleys…
