pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

This makes it all click. Very nice design (and render)

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

Everytime I see a new swerve drive design on CD I just wanna build one even more so...


One of these days...

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

There's your problem. Use JPG, not PNG, for renders.

I cropped the 45MegaByte PNG pic and converted to JPG and reduced the filesize by a factor of 200 with no perceptible loss of quality.

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

Yep. They are quite complicated, but pay off in the end, especially if you can get them light enough. By the way, Great design.

Now, for me:
Design and build a swerve drive vex robot to take to competitions! I'd like to see how that would work out ;)

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

I think it'd be helpful to see an exploded view of one of the modules so that it's clearer how they're designed and assembled. Any chance of that happening?

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

I can work on one yes, no guarantees on the time it'll take to get to it though.

Who's to say I haven't already done so? ;)

No, no, in actuality The amount of motor resources I'd like to dedicate to drive is far from optimal so as far as the rules remain the way they are I will not be building a swerve in VEX.

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

Ya. That would indeed be a bad idea, especially after I just finished a holonomic chassis that requires 4 motor ports, not 8. Also, there is a motor quota of ten, so that would be 4/5ths of my quota!

I'd like to keep some outputs for my cool scanning distance sensor and it's moving mount!:D :D :D :D :D

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

This is awesome, I think smaller 2.5-3.5" wheels are going to start being more "common" for FRC use. I agree an exploded view would really help to understand what all is going on in there.

Also what program did you use to make this render? It's beautiful!

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

If I weren't using WiFi, I would have killed my data plan!!! That reminds me when I saved a GIMP picture as HTML and the filesize was over 250MB! Crashed my computer the first time I tried to do it!:D :D :D :D :D

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

What program was this rendered with?

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

SolidWorks

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

I'm pretty sure this is not solidworks. Andrew uses inventor so this being solidworks would make no sense. I am pretty sure this is 3ds max

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

This was rendered in 3ds Max by my friend and animator Cody Smith. I am slowly learning how to do something like this, but he is far more knowledgeable in this regard. Plus I am helping keeping his house warm since there are 5 (I think) i7s that crunch all the data for one render, and its 30 degrees in Colorado currently.

I also only have one i7 processor at my disposal instead of an entire render farm so it would take me a couple days to actually pull something off like this.

- Andrew

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

Maybe I'm missing something. VEX offers a swerve drive kit; one could easily be built with 5 or 6 motors.

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

This is incredibly well done. I hope you put the CAD up so others can see what you did. I'm trying to teach the new freshman to Cad and this is the perfect example of what I hope they can do someday.

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

Yes I am aware of this fact but the level of dexterity and flexibility required by NARs robot designs needs something far more space efficient. We have yet to find a decent acceptable way of doing a swerve without adding lots of interestingly complex mechanisms to allow us to get the same performance out of a swerve compared to one of our x holo drives or tank drives.

I've been wanting to build a vex swerve for a while and I'm sure it will be done eventually just so far we haven't been happy with our solutions to the problem yet.

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

Sorry, my comment wasn't meant toward the OP. It was directed toward the people who were asking about swerve use in VRC.

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

Any idea what the weight would look like for this?

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

This set up here is roughly 37 lbs (including some left electronics left out of the render) Those electronics consisted of enough talon motor controllers to power the machine. They were removed because polygon counts were through the roof.

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

Swerve is cool, but you have to have a need for it to make it worth while... We did it our first year before I got on our team, and our drive team didn't use it to it's full potential.

Look at all your options for drive trains and pick the one that fits your needs, not the one that just looks cool or the one with the awesome bells & whistles.

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

Cody here (the guy who rendered this).

I made the VRC animations Clean Sweep and Round Up.

This render was made with 3ds max 2014 using the mental ray renderer. It utilized three of my four rendernodes which each pack 2x Intel Xeon i7 E5540's + my 4.3 GHz (OC) i7 2700k workstation. Even with all that power this render took a very long time to complete (I ran it overnight).

This isn't surprising, it's a 4k high quality render with DOF and a large trace depth. Believe it or not I've had worse renders. This render of the Toss Up field featured segmented shadows, caustics and volumetric lighting - even @ 1080p it took the entire farm over a day to render.

Andrew's work has always been amazing, rendering it has always been fun.

Regarding the PNG, that is the raw file 3ds generated. It's so big because it's a 16-bit image not an 8-bit like traditional graphics (IE 16 bits per color channel not 8). My 10-bit monitor can display some of this advanced color depth. I gave Andrew the whole image because why not? Fun fact, mental ray actual computes in a 32-bit color-depth.

But yeah a more web-optimized version could be made, PNG or JPEG - doesn't really matter, I like PNG better.

-Cody

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

If those red gears are made from plastic like I think they are, shouldn't you be worried about stripping them? they seem awfully thin...

Re: pic: Micro Swerve Module Drive Train
 

They are made from AL, They are also a sensor gear for rotation of the pods