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5. Shaft Adapter

The newly released vex high strength axle is very good for high torque sutuations. One minor yet extreme flaw is that the high strength axle does not fit into the vex sensors. The reason we require to have a sensor on a high strength axle is that we must record/sense the rotations or angle of the axle. For the 2014-2015 Vex Robotics Game, Skyrise, we designed a scissor lift. Scissor lifts generally have high torque gear ratios therefore requiring strong axles. The high strength axle is perfect for our lift, yet we would like to sense the rotations or angle using either a Optical Shaft Encoder or using a Potentiometer. Unfortunatley currently there is no way to fit the high strength axle into these sensors. We have developed an adapter from normal strength to high strength. On one side of this adapter there is a slot for either a nylock or a hex nut. On the other side there is a slot for a 8-32 size screw. The axle adapter is optimized by having a larger axle hole than the actual axle. We did this because it allows the axle to move, with low effort, in and out of the slot, but once the screw and nut are tightend the axle is held in place. The adapter's design is similar to the new clamping shaft collars because we used this design, we know for fact that it will work. We actually made a competition legal adapter using the clamping collar and a high strength insert. Details of this design project and results are shown in our video and CAD presentation.