pic: Short Swerve Module
 

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Beautiful design, Andrew. I remember you telling me over the summer it was tiny, but this is just insane! I'd love to see this make it onto an offseason chassis for testing.

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This is amazing! Absolutely stunning. :D

These may be a stupid questions, but I can't seem to figure out what the orange housing around the wheel is. Is it 3D printed? Or will it be machined?
Also, what's acting as your thrust bearing?

Once again, amazing design.
(The render was done beautifully as well)

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I like the form factor of this design, although I'm curious why you decided to optimize this design for height. I have recently CAD'd a swerve module that is optimized for width. Because on many robots space in the middle of the robot is at a premium where as there is usually plenty of space for the height of the drive train. I found the limit of how thin I could make it was 3", partially because the CIM is 2.5" in diameter.

Is the wheel housing made of plastic?
Also I would be concerned with the linkage between the pneumatic cylinder and the shifting mechanism, you may get some racking.
Do you have a picture of the rendering from the other side?
What miter gears are you using above the wheel?

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Wow! That's what I call, engineering! Do you have any CAD models? That is impressive because it is small. How much does it weigh? I think my team might be interested in something like this!

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I would guess to lower the COG.
Maybe to shorten ground clearance?
Although there are other methods of doing both.

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This is a CAD model.

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I can sum this all up with one word, I think.

Wow.

I think this beats out the one that was built around the CIM.

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Wow, that is a beautiful render. What software/setup was used for it?

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so... how do you mount it?

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Well, if it is a CAD model, it looks realistic. Are there any downloads for the model?

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On par with that one (They were a rookie team the season they made it and successfully implemented it).


I love it! It kinda looks like a Van Door Motor.

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What is the actual ground clearance? I like the way you did the shifting mechanism.

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"rookie"

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Fine, a "rookie" team mentored by Aren. :rolleyes:

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Very impressive CAD. Can you post a picture of the other side? I love how over the past 10 years that I have been in FIRST is how much smaller drivetrains are today. I remember when I thought 6 inches wheels were tiny on a robot.

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Andrew - Solid work. I haven't fully digested all of it, how about a few more angles?


Not just Aren...

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^ what he said, they probably would've done a lot better without me making them do dumb things like that swerve.

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Along with this question, can you post a render of just the wheel housing+sprocket?

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I'm going to go out on a limb for everyone here and ask for a STEP file. I think a few screen shots would do justice but the actual file would not only help all of us understand what's going on but also help you with specific design revisions after comments are posted.

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This. Other than that, this rendering looks absolutely beautiful.

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Wow I got a lot of questions!

First off thanks for the compliments and questions!

Sorry for the late responses I have been busy for the past 24 ish hours.

Anyways Below I have answered a large majority of the questions I believe, If I missed yours feel free to remind me! Also I have made a Google+ Album of what I had screen capped from my CAD, including some requests.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/1...49989384789217

The Red/Orange Swerve Pod has a fun manufacturing procedure, I figured it could be machined with a very complex/expensive machine/run-time given the capabilities, but it also can be printed as well using DMS printers (easiest way in my opinion). The bearings that hold the modules in place are in two locations If you can see the white plastic, those actually house the pod inside it keeping it nice and stable. They would be made of Delrin most likely and would have to be assembled to be very concentric. Again this would be a highly experimental mechanism and its been something I want to prototype for a while. I also think it gives it a cool look, but that's just me.

I designed it this way as just a personal challenge, my last one was 6 inches tall and I really aimed to make this one reach 4 inches. 4 inches was absolute best case Everything worked, 5 inches was acceptable. I hit 4.6 and admittedly I could remove some more material if I wanted but I didn't to keep some integrity of the plastic.

I think if I were to make one of these I would prototype it in plastic just for a desk piece, but all parts should be Aluminum, or for fun 3D printed Titanium. (not a cheap project to undertake) That being said I do hope to make an operational one eventually.

This was also a concern of mine as well, I could probably choose a micro-guided cylinder now that I think about it and get a better result for the shifting I might have to revisit this portion for another iteration.

I don't remember, I think I actually used the Gear Creator in Inventor simply because I had accepted that the amount of custom parts for this project was through the roof already. And that it was really just a proof of concept.

Of course I do!

This was modeled in Autodesk Inventor 2013 On my home computer, and rendered by my friend Cody Smith. I haven't had time to make any renders and he likes seeing what his rig can actually do as he upgrades it. This was actually just a draft render, but we both have become so busy recently that we couldn't work further into making a final one. That and this module alone could cripple most rigs in terms of poly-counts

Album Link here, and in photo description shows more detail on how this system works.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/1...49989384789217

Very, Very Small. .4375 inches from the bottom of the belly pan, to the bottom of the wheel. Mounting mounting can be seen in the various pictures in the Album, its an array of 8-32 bolts that would be bolt the entire thing to the frame, I also considered a motor support to counter act the load of the motors hanging off that far. As one could see the Actual CAD seems unfinished missing various electronic components. This is because I figured I would design those into whatever structure attached the drive train to the rest of the robot.

I can probably get the CAD up eventually, I'd have to do some cleaning up/final gritty details to complete.

I think that's everything! Feel free to expand on what new information you have!

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This is so cool! A great design project and really out of the box.

Great work!

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In this picture, why did you opt to put the CIMs inward? I would think it would probably be more optimized with them along the outer walls, but I guess it would depend on attachments for piece manipulation. Maybe a staggered layout to put the CIMs side by side to gain room along a different dimension. (in this image, opt for a "wide bot" manipulator and turn the "front" two modules so the cims run along the "side" walls, freeing center space)



Sorry for the page reformatting lol

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I did this so the wheels were at the outermost point of the robot, and Ironically the entire drive base is 17.9 x 22.25 x 4.6 in that picture. Keep in mind this entire system is also 4 inches tall, If I were to put anything on top of this I would do an over the bumper manipulation technique.