This presentation introduces the concepts needed to effectively select motors and design gear ratios. It starts from the system requirements and guides you through to finding the perfect gear ratio.
An updated (stripped down) version of JVN's Mechanical Design calculator. Useful for performing drivetrain-design & mechanism-design gearing calculations.
Spreadsheet to calculate time for a Flywheel to spinup to speed. Wheel and motor characteristics are customizable. Also has code for calculating spinup assuming an optimally shifting transmission with up to 3 gears.
a californian combat robot builder contacted me through chiefdelphi and asked me about mecanum wheels. now im designing wheels for a 3lb mecanum flamethrower bot. here's the teaser shot.
Yes, i cheated the Nylon 4-40 screws they get razorknif'ed off
This is a document concerning robot steering. It explains the numerous steering modes for Team 79’s robot, Captain Krunch 6. This robot uses a crab-drive design.
We developed these steering modes in 2003 and 2004.
This is a tool I use to get my chain adjuster travels right and to give my "gut" a chance to "see" the chain path before I commit to it in metal (I like to judge the amount of chain wrap around a sprocket visually).
It is not a perfect tool. It does not have any way to en...
Describes the 'SimSwerve' omnidirectional drive system used by Simbotics (Team 1114) in 2004. It includes an overview of the theory behind omnidirectional drive (with pseudocode), a description of various possible designs, and a detailed description of the design used. See the discussion thread fo...
This whitepaper contains two spreadsheets which are intended to aid a designer in the design of a mechanism, or drivetrain for use on a FIRST robot. It also contains several options for the advanced modeling of a drivetrain in motion under varying conditions.
This is just a few renders of our Standard Drive. It uses a sprocket and chain system to four wheels off the CIMs, with sprocket reduction.
This is a good way for new team members to see an example of something not too technical.
It worked great last year, we think we'll probably use it again thi...
Here is an entire print package for what we TechnoKats call a "trick wheel". We don't claim to have the very first one of these, but we did have a version of this wheel on our 1998 robot. Mark Koors, TechnoKat engineer extra-ordinare, is the idea-man and designer of these wheels (he is a...
Truly good teasers should give people a good place to start guessing, while still leaving some mystery and uncertainty. - Travis Covington [more] 
