(upbeat music)

Welcome back to the VEX Classroom. My name is Matt, and in this video, we'll be reassembling the V5 Clawbot Claw. The V5 Clawbot Claw, otherwise known as the V5 Claw Kit v2, was included in a lot of the V5 kits, both the classroom and competition ones, and it came pre-built. So if you ever have accidentally taken your claw apart, this video can be used as a walkthrough to reassembling it and making sure it works again.

Without further ado, let's go over today's material that we'll need in order to build our claw again. All of the pieces before you were taken directly from our claw, just laid out pretty much unassembled. So if you have ever accidentally taken the claw apart and went to begin sorting the pieces of the claw away, this is what we will need.

In terms of the hardware, we will need 19 one-inch star drive screws and two of the 1.5-inch star drive screws, the ones that have the locking nyloc on the very bottom. We're gonna need 21 hex nuts and 18 of these very skinny spacers. You'll notice these spacers are not like any of the other spacers that you have, as the diameter of them is a lot smaller compared to those 0.375 outer diameter spacers. So we'll need 18 of those, as well as eight of these washers that, again, were on our claw that we will be putting back together.

In terms of the actual pieces of the claw, we'll notice we need four of these black pieces of plastic. Those actually form our claw itself. They are one-of-a-kind in your VEX kit, so if you ever were sorting it, you should be able to find it pretty easily. We'll need two of these C-shaped pieces of plastic. Those will be the mounting locations for our claw, as well as these two black pieces of plastic. They're a little bit larger, and they have a very complex shape. These are what actually hold all of our contents together in order to allow our claw to operate. Once you have two of those, lastly, you'll need the two red rubber bands that were placed on the front of the claw in order to help with the grip, as well as two one-by-three linkage beams. Again, one-of-a-kind on the claw. Lastly, the gear crank arm, which has the gear on one side, as well as the linkage beam going down the center. These are what allow the claw to open and close.

In addition to all of this hardware, I have a couple of tools that'll help us on today's journey. Found at rulers.vex.com, I have the V5 parts ruler. This will make it really easy whenever it comes to measuring out the screws just to make sure we have the correct size of screw, as well as a T15 star drive screwdriver to drive our screws home.

Now in the VEX Library, I'm gonna go ahead and pull that up now, we also have a new article titled "Repairing and Reassembling a V5 Clawbot Claw." This is what we'll be using today in order to follow along with these pre-built build instructions that are right in the center of our article. The article goes through a little bit of information. You know, if you've accidentally disassembled it, this is the article for you. This is what we will be using today in order to put our claw back together.

These build instructions, as well as the link to this article, will be linked in the description of this video below. I highly recommend you to pull up your own version of the build instructions. Since they're 3D, you can move them around yourself, and basically, I'll have the build instructions in this video down in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen just so you can follow along a little bit more clearly so that you can make sure your claw is built correctly.

Without further ado, let's get back into building this claw.

Once you've gone ahead and pulled up the build instructions, I've just made mine full screen in a separate tab so they're a little bit more easy to view, we're greeted with a picture of what the claw should look like, similar to our claw that I have right in front of us. This is what we will be trying to recreate today.

So let's go ahead and move on by pressing this arrow button. I can see we're jumping straight into it. We're gonna need two of the claw assembly pieces of plastic. These are two-of-a-kind, and they are the exact same shape. One side is flush, and the other side has that little lip. We're gonna need both of those. We're also going to need four one-inch star drive screws. A couple of the parts in these build instructions are labeled, so if you actually click on them, we can see what it says. We have our two pieces of plastic, and we have our four screws. We're gonna need four of those skinny spacers. They are 0.75 inches long, and I can double-check that with our ruler, which they are. We have those four spacers and four hex nuts.

In addition to all this, we're gonna need these two red pieces of plastic. We have our one-by-three linkage beams. We have two of those, as well as our two red gear crank arms. These guys right here, clog gear cranks. So now we can just go ahead and start putting all of the pieces together.

I'm gonna be working from the bottom of the step up, so I'm gonna put these hex nuts directly into that piece of plastic first, just because they almost act as a hex nut retainer. I am working with this piece of plastic. We can see that the lip is on the top relative to your screen. I'm gonna flip it over, and we're gonna be on the bottom side where I can see that it's completely flush, or it's gonna be flat if I set it down on a table. On the flush side, I'm gonna insert four of our hex nuts in a specific pattern. We're gonna have one in the very bottom right, top right, top left, and bottom left. Just going around putting them all in the corners as that is what is shown on our build instructions in the bottom right, they're all gonna go into that bottom of that kind of hex nut retainer spot. Because they have that little depression in that piece of plastic, they're gonna sit flush in there.

What I'm gonna do now is flip it over. So I have my finger on all four of those hex nuts. By flipping it over, I can then put it flat on the table just right here. Now that it's flat on the table with all of my hex nuts in there, I can move it around, and my hex nuts are not gonna fall out. This is gonna make it really easy whenever we come in from the top with our additional pieces of structure. I'm just gonna move it up here so it's more center in the screen. Now what I'm doing is just resting our spacers directly on those four spots where those hex nuts are underneath. Once we do that, I'm going to slide the spacer through the very end of that one-by-three linkage beam, and that's gonna sit, and it's gonna fall a little bit, but that's okay. We're just gonna get everything in the approximate location, and then we'll come through with our top piece to secure it all down.

Now this is a very important step whenever it comes to actually meshing these gears or getting those teeth of the gear to bite each other. We want our gear to operate very smoothly and pretty much in the same manner. As we can see with our prebuilt, those gears function at the exact same time, in the exact same position, just mirrored with each other. So it's very important whenever it comes to assembling these gears that we want those two gears, an easy way to do this is to have them in a straight line. As I can see as I'm holding the gears right here, the linkage beams of the gears form a straight line.

If I were to have one off center with the other, you'll notice whenever I go to close it, one of the sides of the gears will get there a lot faster, meaning our gear, our claw at the very end will not operate as we intend it to. So an easy way to make sure your gears are lined up and your claw will be built correctly is to make a straight line with those gear crank arms so that they'll be meshed in pretty much the same location with each other, and that's what we want.

So once I have all of those pieces now in place, this might be a little bit difficult to see, but I'm gonna come in with our second black piece of plastic. Now with the side that has the lip, I'm gonna make sure that gets sandwiched together with the rest of our build. But it's also really important that I make sure all of these spacers find their way into the exact same location like of the whole Y. So in the top left, bottom left, top right, and bottom right.

What I can do is hold it steady with one hand and make sure everything gets seated in the other hand. You'll know it's fully seated together whenever you are squeezing it together, and nothing is gonna fall out. But it's also important to notice, now that I have done that, my gears are not straight anymore. So an easy way to do this is to pinch the whole assembly at the back. You can do this flat on the table, and I just wanna make sure those gears become straight. Again, once they're straight with each other, that will make sure that our claw will operate as intended to, and it won't beat the other side, making our claw not operate as we want it to.

So once I have all of those spacers in the approximate location on that piece of plastic, what we're gonna do is secure everything with our one-inch star drive screws. So they're gonna go in the exact same holes that have everything else. You'll notice that my nuts have fallen out from the other side, but that's okay because what I can do is flip it around once I'm holding everything together and put each of those nuts back where they belong onto the end of that screw. Now once we're there, what I'm gonna do is just tighten it down with our screwdriver, and the really important thing to note here is that the amount of pressure that you are applying to these screws does not need to be that much. So as soon as you feel the screw offer a little bit of resistance whenever you are tightening it, just that little bit of resistance is perfect for our use case. If you go any tighter, you may potentially cause damage to any of those spacers, as well as if it's too tight, it will not move that smoothly.

So now we can see, once we have all of the contents in step number one together, it will look something like this in step number two. We have those four hex nuts in the bottom of our claw. Our one-by-three linkage beams are now on the ends, and they can move freely. That's okay right now. And our two gear crank arms can move very smoothly, and I can see that we have that perfect straight line with those two gears. Once we have that straight line, we know our gears are gonna operate and our claws gonna be built correctly. Once all that is double checked, we can go ahead and move on to step number three.

Step number three is going to have us add another one-inch star drive screw, as well as another hex nut. We're gonna go in from the same side as all of our other screws. So I'm gonna put our screw directly into this hole that's in the very back, and it's gonna go all the way through to the other side where there is another spot for us to insert another hex nut. Once that hex nut is there, I can again tighten our screw down just so that once I feel that resistance, that is perfect for our case.

Step number four, we can see we have that hex nut in the bottom, and our build is coming together nicely.

Thank you for following along with this guide. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to reach out. Happy building!

What we're gonna do next is attach the mounting point for our claw to what would be our build. This step is gonna involve two of the C pieces of plastic. They're shaped like a C. One side is very flush, and the other side has a bunch more spots of those depressions that we can place our hex nuts into.

So once we have those two, we're gonna need two hex nuts, as well as two of our 1.5-inch locking star drive screws. So right here, 1.5 inch. They're the locking because they have that little blue nyloc at the very bottom, as well as on our parts ruler, these are one and a half inches.

What we're gonna do now is insert our 1.5-inch screws into our first C piece of plastic. I have the indented side facing up or towards your screen, and I'm going to place two of our screws, the 1.5 inch directly in those two center holes. Once they're in those two center holes, I'm gonna make sure they're gonna stay there. So I'm gonna hold 'em with my thumb, and they're gonna go directly into those two holes here.

On our claw, now they're there, we can see that they're sticking out on the other side. They're gonna be met with our additional C clamp, and I wanna make sure the flush side is closest to the claw and our indented side is facing up. If you have it backwards, like 180 degrees in the wrong direction, you'll notice that the flush side is facing out. That is incorrect. We want that indented side to be facing out, as that will allow us a spot to put any rubber shaft collars or shaft collars into those depressions on that C.

So once everything is sticking through, we're gonna make sure it gets secured with the usage of our two hex nuts from the opposite side. If built correctly, those will sit directly in that C depression, the hex nut retainer on that piece of plastic. And again, all I'm doing is tightening it until I feel a little bit of resistance. Once I feel that bit of resistance, no need to go any further. It's not gonna come loose because we're also using those locking screws and because it doesn't need to be that tight.

As I can see in step number six, we are looking good. And go ahead and move on to step number seven. This is where we will begin to build the actual claw of our claw. So where it now will munch together, that's what we're gonna be working on.

So we're just gonna put our claw to the side. We're gonna need a first piece of plastic that's shaped like this. I don't know how, I don't know what, how to describe what this shape is, but there's nothing else in your V5 kits that kind of look like this, so it's one-of-a-kind. We'll need one of these. We're gonna need two one-inch screws. We're gonna need two spacers. We're gonna need two washers, as well as two hex nuts, just for this step.

We're gonna also orient the piece very similar to how it's shown in the build instructions. By doing this, it allows us to kinda see what's actually happening a lot more clearly. So I can see, I wanna place two screws through this very front hole, as well as this hole that's on the side all by itself. But I need to take note that these are going to be inserted from the bottom.

So what I'm gonna do is first put my two hex nuts directly into those two locations where they will be fastened to. And then with my one-inch screws, I'm going to put my spacer on, followed by that washer. The washer, although it seems really small and inconspicuous in this step, it's actually very important as it allows just the right amount of tolerance between your screw and the very bottom of that piece of plastic.

If you were to forget that washer, your screw may potentially protrude to the other side of that claw potentially getting in the way of any of the components of our claw, so any of the gears, any of the linkage beams, and that's not what we want. So make sure you have those spacers on.

Thank you for following along with this build process. If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to reach out. Happy building!

Once I have everything together, likewise to how we're doing the rest of this build, it doesn't need to be that tight. The more you tighten it, the more that screw may protrude out of the bottom. So once you feel a little bit of resistance, that's good for our case. We don't need to go any tighter. There's no need to 'cause it won't come loose.

So I can see from step eight, we have all of that together. We can now move on to step number nine in which we will be doing the exact same operation, just with a second piece. So we have that bottom piece now with the screws on the bottom. We're gonna take an additional black piece, orient it very similarly to how our other one is shown, and we're gonna add two additional screws and washers to the very top now. This will call for the usage of two more hex nuts. They're gonna go in the bottom of this followed by two more washers. I'm gonna simply put them into this piece of plastic, and they will sit right where I need them.

Next, I'm gonna take a screw, put the spacer on the screw, and tighten it down to that piece of metal. And honestly for this build, just hand tightening these four screws is pretty much all you need because, again, if you were to go any tighter, that screw may potentially protrude from the bottom, and that's not what we want. So once everything is there, it's now coming together.

So in step number 10, we can see that we have two mirrored pieces. We have what will be our bottom claw, as well as our top claw. These will now connect to our claw assembly in step number 11 through the usage of more pieces of hardware. So what I'm gonna do to make this very simple on myself is I'm kind of gonna rest everything together. What I want to do is get all of our pieces. So we're gonna put three more hex nuts into the bottom of this claw 'cause this will be our bottom piece.

Now these hex nuts are also in a very specific orientation, configuration. We have a hex nut in this hole right where my index finger is pointing. So it's the very bottom of this piece of plastic. In this grouping of three, it's the very bottom. In the next grouping of three, we have a hex nut both in the bottom, as well as that top hole, and, again, it's underneath this piece of plastic. So it might be a little bit difficult to see right now. I'm just gonna go ahead and make sure nothing is gonna fall out. So I'm holding everything from the bottom with my additional hand.

Now I'm gonna line up everything in a very specific way. Very similar to how we fastened our red pieces of plastic to our claw assembly, we want to put these spacers through, the spacers through those red pieces of plastic into and over top of where our hex nuts are. So remember, we had the one in the very back, the one in the very bottom of the center group, as well as we put an additional spacer at the very top of those three. Once everything is in place, and I've aligned it to how the build instructions are telling me, I'm gonna go ahead and simply fasten everything together with our one-inch screws.

Once I'm going in just wiggling the screws around to get those spacers to line up, something may have fallen out, but that's no problem because the screw is holding everything together, I can actually go ahead and tighten them down until I feel a little bit of that resistance. Once I feel that resistance, that is perfect for our case. We now have one half of our claw back together. You should be able to feel your claw move still very, very easily. This is because we did not excruciatingly tighten everything down so that it's gonna be obstructed by those pieces of metal, as well as the tightness from the pieces of metal sandwiching together. It is still able to move very smoothly.

So now that is step 11 finished. We can see this step finished in step number 12, and this is a good point to just see, is my claw coming together?

So we can still see from our original build, our two gear crank arms are lining up perfectly so that whenever we attach that second claw arm on, it's gonna line up straight, and that's what we want.

So we can move on to step number 12. Yeah, I'd say that is basically the most important step, is aligning those two gears. Now, bringing on the final stretch, the home stretch, we're just gonna build the second half of our claw doing the exact opposite from before.

For this step, we're gonna need two hex nuts, place them into our claw piece of plastic. I'm gonna orient it very similar to how it's shown in the build instructions, and I can see I put them on the wrong side, but that's a great thing to double-check just to make sure that you're doing it correctly. So I can see that I'm holding it very similar to how it's shown. We're gonna have two of our hex nuts placed on the very top of our build in the lone hole, as well as the very, very top hole. These are gonna be followed by two screws.

On the screw, first, will go a spacer followed by that, a very important washer. Once the washer's on, then it can be secured from underneath into that spot where that hex nut was. We're gonna do that operation one more time for that second hex nut. We have our screw, we have the spacer, now we have the washer. This will simply go up underneath again into that spot. I've hand tightened them until they can't go anymore. That's perfect for our case. We don't need it to be any tighter. The tighter it'll be, the more it'll protrude, the more it may cause potential issues, kind of so that your claw won't work. Basically, in layman's terms.

I can see in step number 14, we are moving and grooving. Step number 15, we're gonna do this one more time. So I'm gonna orient the two pieces very similar. This will be the top portion of our claw. We've already made the bottom. So with the top portion of our claw, we're gonna place two hex nuts, same location, very front and the lone hole up to the side. Now that we have all of our pieces, we're gonna place those two hex nuts underneath. They will be sandwiched between our claw, so we have those two hex nuts, one in the very front, and one in the very side. These will be followed by our patented screw with the spacer as well as the washer. Once they are all together on the screw, they can be hand tightened to our claw.

Doing this operation again, put the spacer on the screw, as well as that washer. Then this whole assembly will be screwed into our claw. Now that we have both of these, I can feel on the bottom that that screw assembly is not protruding at all. That is perfect, and that's what we want so that it'll be able to move smoothly. Now I can see in step number 16 that what we have is what is prescribed. So that's perfect for us.

We can now move on to step number 17 in which we're gonna put it all together. So very similarly to what we did before, we are going to attach everything in a similar manner. So I wanna make sure that I have my hex nuts on the very bottom of our claw. The hex nuts are gonna go into, in this bottom grouping of three, it's gonna go into the very bottom hole, as well as in the middle grouping of three, it's gonna go into the bottom as well as the top. Once they're in there, and they're in that hex nut depression, we can align it to where it's gonna go on our claw and place our spacers through our red pieces of plastic directly over top of those hex nuts.

So whenever we come through with our top piece of plastic, that will rest on those spacers, we can drop our screws all the way through, and they will bite the hex nuts that are now located on the bottom. So that's how this sandwich is being made. It's just through the claw itself, and that's how this whole linkage is able to operate through this very specific path.

Once I have all three of those screws through our claw, as well as all of the hex nuts securely fastened, in addition to all of those spacers, I'm gonna go ahead and test our claw. I can feel it's very smooth to move around, to open up, and to close. I can even see that it'll operate pretty much through the use of good old gravity. So that's how your claw should be operating following the build instructions, in addition to using those spacers.

Maybe a little bit difficult without the build instructions. You might be confused as to where those spacers and washers go, but hopefully now your claw is back in working order. Before we are done, we have one last step, which includes putting our rubber bands on. Remember, these are what will increase your traction as well as your grip strength with your claw. Without it, it's just plastic. So we can go ahead and attach these bad boys.

Now as we can see in the build instructions, they are on kind of a very specific way. Now we can go ahead and try to mimic this. So I can see that we want to loop our rubber band. Here, we'll do it similar to how they're shown and in the similar side. So we're gonna be with the cloth facing away from us, we are going to be working on this left side. We're gonna put it first loop on the top, and then we are going to take the very, my left hand, we're gonna take this strand and feed it down. We're then just gonna wrap it around this bottom post with the opposite side and then bring it around to the other side.

But you'll notice, on the build, we want our rubber band to be in front on both the top and the bottom. So we have our rubber band in front on the top. What I can do is simply flip it around so that it will be now in the front on the bottom. So we have our rubber band on the front on the top and in front on the bottom. It's a little bit tricky, a little bit of a learning curve whenever it comes to attaching these rubber bands. But by putting them on in this X shape, it allows for pretty good contact with anything that you're grabbing.

So to do this operation again, first, I'm just gonna loop it around the two top posts and feed the back side through. Once the back is through, we're just gonna loop one side around the opposite and then take the remaining, feed the opposite, just like that, and take the remaining to the opposite side like that. To get them both in front, I can just do that little operation. And now both of my rubber bands are in the front on the top as well as the bottom.

So now your claws should be operating smoothly and correctly, so it is now built again. I hope you have found this video walkthrough to be very helpful whenever it comes to rebuilding your V5 Claw Kit v2. Let me know in the community if you found these build instructions helpful or if you'd like to see anything changed.

If you need anything else, please feel free to tag me in the community, and I'll see you in the next one.

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