Oh, I’m sure of it, too. We have about 1.8 seconds reliably. I was just picking on Mr. Rees. 
Nice job. I have talked to a whole bunch of “3 second” teams that still can’t deploy there mini and hope to figure it out later…
At a minimum it is worth 10-15 points. If it works every time, I would wager this will get you picked up for eliminations and thus well worth the effort.
That is so true! We had a fast bot but it took quite some effort to get it onto the pole!
Team 241 had a breakthrough on minibot design # 5.
Design #1 - tank= The All Tetrix Aluminum, nuts and bolts - direct drive 4" wheels on Tetrix gearbox and motors. Mousetrap action to connect to pole.
**
Weight 4.4# Time 4.5-5 sec
Reliability - 10/10 trials
Deployment 0.5 seconds - self-aligning to pole prior to End Game**.
Design #2 - add 2:1 external gearing to design #1 - mostly built but not tested. Stopped work when Richard published his dynamometer results of Tetrix motors with and without gearboxes.
Design #3 - direct drive motors w/o gearboxes with motors with 3/16" shaft covered in thin surgical tubing running on the inside rim of the 4" wheels.
Weight 4.5# Time - fail - the motors would slip on the inside of the rims.
Design #4 - “the crossbow” - direct drive motors w/o gearboxes with motors with 3/16" shaft covered in thin surgical tubing running on the inside rim of the 4" wheels. Inside rim covered with rubber band material to provide extra grip.
Weight 3.3# Time 7 seconds - too much friction on rubberband to surgical tubing contact. Very disappointing.
Design #5 - midget - direct drive to 3/8" wheels, Mousetrap action to connect to pole. Uses bare motors, battery, nylon standoffs, OFF switch and 3 or 4 nuts and bolts from the Tetrix kit.
Weight 2.1# !!! Time ~2 seconds
(still need to adjust deployment to allow either the midget or the tank and mount the turnoff switch) may add another 0.1 lbs.
Reliability - not known yet
No magnets.
In case you can’t read a date, this was first, by far
Well, This is the culmination of six hours of work. Our team didn’t take the minibot seriously, so when the minibot team failed to produce in 6 weeks, I took it upon myself to fix it. When calculated, from the base of our deployment to the top, it will take a little over 4 seconds. Sorry about the video, I almost broke the robot. :ahh: It uses direct drive to two 3" wheels. The wiring has been planned for deployment, but has not been fixed yet.
Team3344mini.zip (1.24 MB)
Team3344mini.zip (1.24 MB)
Pretty great weight. We have a similar super minibot that uses magnets and we are sitting at about 2.5 lbs.
How are you protecting the motors from smoking in case of a misfire? And how many motors have you gone thru?
We have inadvertently smoked 3 motors early on and since have been more careful.
We have ruined the same amount