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Tubing or Flexible-Wheel Intake

Use this page as a deeper follow-up to the quick reference, not as a full build guide.

Still deciding? Start with the Intake Quick Reference.

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  • Pick this style when you want fast pickup of smaller or awkward loose pieces.
  • Its biggest strength is aggressive collection speed.
  • Its biggest tradeoff is that it is usually harder to control cleanly.
  • Rough build difficulty: medium.
  • Rough maintenance difficulty: medium to high.

Why Teams Pick This Intake

GM0 recommends tubing intakes as a strong option for smaller objects such as balls, cubes, minerals, and rings. High-speed tubing can sweep pieces in quickly, and multi-stage tubing systems can keep pieces moving deeper into the robot.

This page groups tubing and flexible-wheel ideas together because teams often compare them as softer-contact intake families for faster pickup. The exact details can vary a lot.

What a Good Version Looks Like

  • The intake grabs the piece quickly without spraying it back out.
  • The roller material has enough grip to keep moving the piece through the path.
  • The system handles more than one piece only if the downstream path can handle it too.
  • The stages overlap enough that there is no dead zone between rollers.
  • The geometry is tuned with real testing, not guessed from photos.

Good public examples and patterns:

  • 8375 Vulcan Robotics surgical tubing intake and funneling approach
  • 8393 Giant Diencephalic BrainSTEM Robotics Team Velocity Vortex intake
  • 11115 Gluten Free Rover Ruckus tubing intake
  • 7203 KNO3 Rover Ruckus tubing intake
  • TPU flap examples such as 731 Wannabee Strange and 8417 Lectric Legends

Material Choice and Contact Behavior

  • Surgical tubing is a proven high-speed intake material in FTC.
  • GM0 notes that tubing stiffness, diameter, length, and RPM all change behavior a lot.
  • TPU or other flexible printed flaps can work well, but they are better for teams already comfortable with 3D printed parts and iteration.
  • Softer contact can help retention, but soft parts also wear faster.

What to Watch Out For

  • High-speed intakes can over-collect or launch pieces into bad places.
  • If the buffer or box behind the intake is weak, fast collection turns into a control problem.
  • Tubing length, stiffness, and RPM interact more than many teams expect.
  • Flexible printed parts can tear or fatigue if the design is too thin.
  • Multi-stage versions add speed, but they also add more places to jam.

Build Difficulty

Overall build complexity is usually medium for a short simple version and high once multiple stages are added.

  • A basic front tubing roller can be simple.
  • A well-controlled multi-stage path is much harder.
  • This style rewards testing more than guessing.

Maintenance and Reliability

Overall maintenance complexity is usually medium to high.

  • Expect tubing, flaps, and soft wheels to be wear items.
  • Plan fast replacement for damaged rollers or flexible parts.
  • Watch for entanglement, slipping, and inconsistent contact after heavy use.
  • Re-check retention after hard hits, because soft systems can move out of tune.

Good Starting Point

  • Start with a single short stage and prove that it can collect consistently.
  • Add more stages only if the robot truly needs a deeper transfer path.
  • If the gamepiece is small and fast cycling matters a lot, this is often worth prototyping early.

Compare It to Other Intake Options

What Still Needs Confirmation

  • Confirm that the current season's gamepiece shape really benefits from high-speed soft-contact pickup.
  • Confirm the legal part choices, size limits, and any possession limits that may change how aggressive the intake should be.

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