Guide:Advanced brown techniques/Cranes

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[edit] Cranes

This article is part of the Advanced Brown Guide. It is about cranes, also known as vertical retrievers, and their uses.

[edit] Dual Weight

These have the same basic frame as flex underpults, and a nice alternative to having to tweak those ever-so sensitive brown wheels. Only problem is it doesn't go very far horizontally.

Add weight, use a good amount of sticks for this one (adjust for distance)
Build part 1 of the frame, just like in the underpult guide. [1]
Build part 2 of the frame. [2]
Build a second weight out of water rods and attach it to the place shown. [3] The wood rod stack needs to be 1.5/2x heavier than the water stack.
Attach the basket, build it to however you see fit to grab the goal piece. [4]
Attach the wood rod chain to the back of the crane, as shown. [5] Then tweak your contraption to win! [6]

[edit] Troubleshooting

My Contraption phases through the landscape when i pull the goal basket back!
- Ok, What you do, is double over the base of you're crane. Like this. [7] the two layers of rods should prevent phasing.

The ball comes out of the bottom of the basket when i pull the basket back!
- Either make the bottom of the basket a little smaller, just enough so the goal piece will come through; Or just make the basket like i did here: [8] Its not nearly as effective, but it is an alternative.

if you encounter any problems, Post your problem and the most sensible solution in this section.

[edit] Examples

By ~Jon~

By Bdnndb

[11]

By robotmafia

[12]

Practice Level

If you have any designs/practice levels, please add them here.

[edit] Parallelovators

Credit to Lukasran for the concept. This is a great alternative to gravitypults (AKA Drop-A-Pults) because they can have a timer much more easily.

click to add weight, you need a pretty good amount depending on the size of your contraption. use just a few sticks more than the weight it takes to counter the weight of the basket.
Build your standard slanted parallelogram. [13] The farther upward you adjust the side across from the basket (in this case its the right side), the higher the basket will rise. Also, keep into consideration that the left and right sides must be the very close to the same length. After all, it IS a parallelogram..
Build a basic stand for the parallelogram as shown. [14] Make sure and hit play to see how it works if not already obvious.
Attach a supported triangle to the bottom half of the parallelogram. this acts as the lever for the weight to push down on.[15]
Build a chain/timer of your choosing and attach it to the weight.
attach a rod from the chain to the triangle made in step 4. then attach a rod from the chain to the bottom corner of your contraption. These two rods act as a guide for the weight. [16]
Add a basket to the lower side of the aforementioned parallelogram, Customize it to your choosing, and make a small triangle to hold the ball in.(you may want to replace the lower side of the parallelogram with a wood rod, like i did in the example.)
Get the ball in the basket with whatever you like. i just used a single wood rod. After that, you may want to build a little brace against the ledge, so your contraption doesn't shift around and fall through the hole. All you have to do now is tweak it to win! [17]

[edit] Troubleshooting

I don't have enough power to raise the elevator, but if i use more sticks the contraption's joints break!
- move the stick guide (mentioned in step 6) closer to the supported triangle lever (mentioned in step 4) This gives you move leverage. Another thing it could be is joint order. try deleting some things and reconnecting them.

The parallelogram folds upon trying to raise it.
- Sometimes this isn't caused by not having a perfectly parallel rectangle. It mostly happens when there is too much weight on one side of the rectangle. the way to fix this is to make the rectangle into a Triangular prism, or Rectangular prism.