The wheels called “balloon” or “beach tires” and people often use them on off-road beach wheelchair or carts. They are inflated to a pressure of only 2.5psi, so the robot handles the defenses really smoothly. They came with bushings which we broached to 1/2" hex.
Sick looking machine yet again. It is insane you guys have yet to win a regional. Hopefully this is the year the Finalist streak ends and you get those blue banners!
Completely agree with this. I feel it is similar to how 2481 was building very good robots but always came up short in the finals for various reasons until they broke through in 2014.
From causally watching the webcast on Sunday, it looks like an accurate high goal shooter.
Each solenoid valve has a 60psi tank attached right to the input it to keep maximum air flow. On the output sides each solenoid is plumbed with two tubes (a brass tee to two 1/4" tubes) to the cylinders on both the retract and extend.
The 2 shooter cylinders are 12" stroke, 3/4" bore, and cushioned on both ends.* Both the cylinders pre-pressurized and are held back with a 3/4" bore, 1" stroke pneumatic trigger cylinder.
All other solenoid valves are the smaller Festo valves.
*We had a similar design in 2014 and had a problem cracking the tees on the cylinder ends because of the shock loads of the shooter at the ends of its stroke, hence the cushions.
Yea, we are definitely hoping to be able to break through this year. It has become a bit of a joke on our team about being a great “2nd place” team. We competed against 2481 in the finals the year they broke through. They build some pretty awesome machines.
Thanks! We did a lot of testing with the prototype shooter and some idea pulling from our 2014 robot which had a similar pneumatic punch.
