Show off your machining!
 

I've always had a liking for some of the nice machine work that goes into FRC robots. I'm one of those people who comes into your pit area and really takes a close look at your robot, because I have an eye for the details. It's disappointing to see that many students don't have an eye for the details, especially when it comes to machined parts. We all know a handful of teams that do really nice work in this area, but I don't think we've ever had a Chief Delphi thread for teams to show off their nice machining work.

So, show off your machining! It can be mill or lathe, manual or CNC. For now, let's leave waterjet, plasma, saw cutting, and sheet metal forming out of it.

If you have a description to go along with the picture, that would be awesome. I'll come back later with a few of my own if I can dig up some pics.

Re: Show off your machining!
 

Heres a picture of my teams new swerve drives.
They have a one peace frame milled from 3" by 6" extrusion.
I would consider it to be quality machining.

Re: Show off your machining!
 

They look really nice. Do you make new ones after kick off?

Re: Show off your machining!
 

Interesting gearing choice- The sprockets are about as large as the wheels.

What do they weigh?

Re: Show off your machining!
 

Very interesting design with the 4-sided extrusion. Could you share what the weight is per drive module?

Re: Show off your machining!
 

Pictures Here

The first is of the majority of our 2010 drivetrain components. Impressive just because of sheer quantity.

The bearing mounts are cool because we 3D surfaced them in the machine. Previously we were hanging a long bar out the side of the vise, machined the contour in from the side, then sending a kid to chop the semi finished part off the raw bar so that the backside could be machined. Switching to the 3D surfaced part eliminated all secondary handling and allowed the parts to get done way faster.

The rest of the pictures are of my favorite part I've ever machined. It was the yoke that held the wheels for our grabber onto the end of the grabber arm in 2011. It was a pretty subtle part when looked at on the robot, but it required a ton of machining and looks really cool on it's own. I like it so much because everything about it came out perfectly, when I was worried that some features wouldn't match, that there would be chatter on the inside walls of the part, etc.

Re: Show off your machining!
 

What was this? 40 wheel tank drive!?! :p

Re: Show off your machining!
 

An oldie but a goodie: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/26323
That was before my time on the team -- we tried to do away with excessive machining...

Re: Show off your machining!
 

that was 7 robot's worth of wheels.

Re: Show off your machining!
 

Do you mind sharing how you made these/how much the aluminum cost you? These are really cool.

Re: Show off your machining!
 

The aluminum alone should only cost you between $1-6 bucks per part. Aluminum isn't too expensive compared to the cost of the retail version of the part.

Also, great thread. Keep putting up cool pics!

-RC

Re: Show off your machining!
 

We chose this mostly for footprint size. They are 6" by 6" square. They're pretty light as wel though. 7.5 lbs each.
A whole drive base, including fame but no electronics weighs 37 lbs.

All of the drive gearing is in the lower box chain to save space on top.
There's a picture of the frame as it was weighed.

Re: Show off your machining!
 

Here was a little 2079 project from Luncay. Unfortunately the swerve drive wasn't as effective as we wanted it to be, but the machining is pretty cool.








Here's a link to more pics.
http://alarmrobotics.wikispaces.com/Swerve+Design+09

Re: Show off your machining!
 

I have always thought a circular swerve would be cool. My next disign iteration has an octagonal pivot for space savings and strength.

Did you have trouble with your cim motor wires tangling?

Also, did you have a special tool and a 4 axis cnc mill to cut the sprockets?

Re: Show off your machining!
 

Beautiful. I knew there was going to be some good stuff when Cory came on the thread.

We've milled some semi-cool things on 100 (Throwback time, like these), but the only decent looking and recent thing I had a photo of was this:



They weren't super tricky parts, but they do have a lot of very cool looking pocketing. Those parts were the siderails of our offseason intake, heavily inspired by (read-cloned from) 1538's intake.

Now, if we were allowed to submit waterjetted parts, these might fit the bill nicely: