OKay this question is for all the team’s that have Mini Bot’s with no wheels, what traction material do you use to get grip on the pole? We’ve tried Surgical Tubing, It just doesn’t seem to get the traction.
Thanks,
-Team 1708
Wave used some kind of rubber. I uploaded some pics of it in a different forum. I’ll try to rememeber which one it was
Surgical tubing.
It needs to be changed after about 5 matches.
For us.
minibot must weigh less than 2.5 lbs
(we tried it on a 4.3 lb minibot with laughable results)
Normal force of the wheels on the pole must be in the right range.
(we use rubber bands to create the right normal force - other teams use magnets)
R92 indicates surgical tubing and rubber bands are ok. Did I miss something that says other rubber sources is ok?
I am not sure what they used but the picture is in the “minibot help” forum. For whatever reason, CD won’t let me re-attach the pic in this forum.
The rules say “P. non-slip pad”. There are a variety of soft and pliable materials listed as non-slip in McMaster and other outlets. I believe that the pad sold to keep cell phones on dashboards is also marketed as “non-slip”.
Surgical tubing. We get at least 15-20 trips up the pole w/o replacing.
Yeah, I forgot about the non slip pads but I am most interested in what appeared to be blue rubber tubing…
We’re using surgical tubing and we haven’t yet had to replace it.
Surgical tubing. A quick search will show that not all products marketed as surgical tubing are made from latex rubber (the most common). Latex definitely has a robustness issue. After switching to another material, we only have to make sure they are clean before each match. Another secret to making sure that the material lasts is to decrease the slip that your motor and wheel combo present to the pole. You don’t want to just make your motors go as fast as possible, you want them to go the right speed for the weight of your minibot (takes a lot of tweaking, at least for us). We tweak the diameter with electrical tape (increasing the diameter of the “wheel”) and then apply the surgical tubing.