pic: Plywood Butterfly Drive Render
 

Re: pic: Plywood Butterfly Drive Render
 

Is there any reason why you cant shift the colsons closer together and use two pistons between the two sides instead of the four to reduce complexity? Otherwise it looks good although you may find you want to gear it to be faster.

Re: pic: Plywood Butterfly Drive Render
 

I would highly suggest you have the traction wheels on the outside and the omni wheels on the inside. We did it like your current setup this year, against the advice of teams like 148, and we regret it. When you shift into traction and want to push you'll tip slightly and end up partially on your omni wheels.

Re: pic: Plywood Butterfly Drive Render
 

So butterfly drive is like octocanum with omni wheels instead of mecanum wheels?

Re: pic: Plywood Butterfly Drive Render
 

Looks good, I want to see the real life prototype!

I expect this to depend a lot on the wheel base of the robot while in traction mode (distance from center of front traction wheel to center of back traction wheel). It probably depends on the torque the piston provides on the wheel modules as well. What was the wheel base for your design? Did the tipping result in any lifting of the opposing robot? Curious on your results.... for science.

My biggest pet peeve of this type of drivetrain approach will always be that the two CIMs on the front don't contribute much power in a pushing situation. If you are geared to be traction limited, I don't think this is an issue.

Re: pic: Plywood Butterfly Drive Render
 

What about arranging the power transmission components like this? (Warning: MS Paint Art):
That would allow all 2 (or 3) CIMs on each side to drive both wheels and move the omni wheels to the inside.

Re: pic: Plywood Butterfly Drive Render
 

I like it. I have to ask, does your team have a laser capable of making this? If so, what kind?

Re: pic: Plywood Butterfly Drive Render
 

We work out of a local hackerspace with a Trotec Speedy 300. Some of the parts are longer than the laser cutter's bed but can be cut in two operations by turning the wood sheet around.

Re: pic: Plywood Butterfly Drive Render
 

Precisely.

Re: pic: Plywood Butterfly Drive Render
 

This is pretty close to what we will be prototyping in the fall. Though we will have spots for at least 4 CIM motor mounts per side.

I have been thinking of a way to have the CIMs still face towards the outside of the rail yet recess into that space between the modules and distribute power like your drawing. This year we used the space on one side to hold the cRIO while on the other it was just wasted space. The reason I would want the CIMs to face the outside is it would allow the overall rail thickness to be reduced since it wouldn't have to contain the entire CIM body.

Re: pic: Plywood Butterfly Drive Render
 

Here's a 6-CIM version, with the wheels belt-driven from a central gearbox. I did not switch the omni and Colson wheels; the robot has to tilt to an extreme angle for the raised omni wheels to touch the ground. It now has adjusted speeds of 13.8 and 6.9 fps.

Re: pic: Plywood Butterfly Drive Render
 

It seems like you can literally flip your modules around to put the omnis on the inside and the traction on the outside. Just move the shaft with the pulley on it a bit closer in, flip the modules, and you're gold.

Re: pic: Plywood Butterfly Drive Render
 

Looks good! Always love to see laser cut wood construction in FRC. Really like the 6 CIM setup with the reversed gearbox. Lot more open in the middle than a lot of octocanum and butterfly designs. With the 6 CIM layout especially, I would recommend flipping your wheels so that it pivots about the traction wheel rather than the omni. Doing this prevents the module from being side loaded when pushed sideways in traction mode.

Have you considered using pancake cylinders for module actuation to save some space and weight?

Re: pic: Plywood Butterfly Drive Render
 

Looks great! In addition to the above (swapping wheel placement), I think you could get a more compact design using four fat pancake cylinders instead of four longer cylinders with a long lever arm on the butterfly. You're losing a lot of pod-turning torque based on that angle anyway, so why not mount a pancake cylinder so it can push the pod straight down?

(We've been iterating octocanum for quite a few years now, and that's how we intend to do it this year if we keep octocanum this year...which we may not.)

Re: pic: Plywood Butterfly Drive Render
 

The biggest issue with this is it makes it harder to do your reductions. If the omni wheel is floating, it's the module that normally is powered first before the traction wheel. In many designs this means the CIMs need to float with the modules, 1477 did it this way this year. Floating the traction wheels allow for much easier gearing. We didn't see any bending in our modules this year that had the traction wheels floating but we used steel side plates. I've heard of teams putting delrin blocks between the modules and the frame to prevent the modules from taking all the side loads when the traction wheels are pushed down.