At the Orlando Regional, our pit neighbors, team 5816, had an interesting suction cup based manipulator. Unfortunately, it never saw action outside of the pit and the team resorted to just playing defense. What other unique systems have you come across, both in this season, and other past seasons?
At the Miami Valley Regional team 544 had a catapult-type mechanism that flipped the cone onto nodes. It may not have been the most efficient, but it was definitely the coolest to watch.
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Team 3459 in North Carolina built a passive ground intake that handed off to an over the top grabber. It didn’t work great from what I saw, but it stood out from all the other grabbers I’ve seen.
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There is no team 544. There was a 554 at that event though, are you referring to them by any chance?
66 had a similar mechanism.
gotta love 3005’s manipulator
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My personal favorite:
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We won the creativity award at Georgian College for our stinger. Instead of rack and pinion we drilled holes and use a sprocket. Works very smoothly.
3468 did this as well.
I don’t recall who, but someone at Magnolia had a rack and pinion using a sprocket for a pinion and for a rack, they managed to slide some #25 chain down into the groove of a 90-20 style extrusion. I could see at a glance that it had to go up and down because of the cable runs to allow for it, but it took me a few seconds to find the actual engagement.
I"ve definitely seen more R&P type systems (some using belt secured to a piece of extrusion with a sheave as well as those above and traditional gearing) this year than I ever have before.
Yes that is what I meant to type. Whoops!