pic: 4587-Sheet Metal Chassis V.2
 

Re: pic: 4587-Sheet Metal Chassis V.2
 

Do you have plans to make use of the rather large dead space within the space created by the beveled sides? If this area was a little more open, it would seem to be an ideal location to tuck some electrical and pneumatic components.

I really like the one piece sheet metal battery mount design.

Re: pic: 4587-Sheet Metal Chassis V.2
 

Cooper this is looking really good, do you have pictures of the underside? Looks like the motors aren't directly driving the omni wheels shaft anymore.

One thing we did this year was make it so the front and back rails of the chassis were easily replaced. It worked out very well for maintenance.

Re: pic: 4587-Sheet Metal Chassis V.2
 

Nice! Looks like a solid design, and like you got all the tricky bits right.

I'd put some material back in the front and back of the frame. Those parts take a beating... You can drop some of the material on the top of the frame, and on the rails holding the wheels. The frame itself will be strong enough, and the holes make it easy to inspect your robot for wear. Point impact loads from other robots and field elements should be your biggest loads. You can take the inner frame rails down to 060 as well. Reinforce the bearing holes when you do that.

Consider lightening the belly pan, and adding PEM nuts in for your electronics. Those small touches take a design to the next level.

Re: pic: 4587-Sheet Metal Chassis V.2
 

I haven't really thought about it yet. I am not sure it it would be ideal due to the fact that I would have to cross over the drive components to get over to that space. Another thing is I think next year we will have more space for electronics due to our new roboRIO. If needed SOMETHING, I don't know what, will go in there. There are some decent sized access holes on the bottom.

Re: pic: 4587-Sheet Metal Chassis V.2
 

The motors still drive the Omni shafts directly. I just have removed the "Gearbox" that would have previously been inside the frame and moved the gears to inside the wheel rail. I had to add another gear to make room for the long cim motor shafts to still keep the wheel rails small-er. I kept them about a 1/2" smaller or so by adding another gear.

As for removing the back rails of the chassis, It would be convenient but I wanted to make the belly pan one piece. I plan to not put a whole lot down there to make it hard to work on. Maybe like a flip up electronics pan that hangs the electronics in the frame. Idk. Majority of the parts for the actual drive train have to be accessed by the bottom anyway, the modules will drop out from the bottom, and the motors have to be bolted on through the bottom too as well as all the gears and other parts.

Here is a picture of the underneath with the belly pan transparent:
http://prntscr.com/406565

I didn't know exactly how much to take out from the back and front but it's good to know that more is needed back in. I do however plan to take material out from the rails. A lot of that is doubled up so it will be .180" instead of just .090" It will see some heavy patterns in the near future. I probably will end up making the belly pan either an X pattern Like 254 or lots of big round holes. Last season my team ran a belly pan made of .090" with the 254 style pattern with holes for every electronic hole there and ready to go for bolts. I put in the correct tap drill size in the CAD and sent the dxf off to the laser and they had enough tolerance to where I could just tap the hole directly from the sponsor with out having to do any drilling. After we tapped the holes we then bolted down all the electronics with plastic bolts and used a pair of dikes to cut off the extra bolt that would stick out bellow the belly pan. I really liked this method and I plan to do it again, it was simple and made doing electronics TONS easier as far as mounting them. Wiring is always a different story..

Re: pic: 4587-Sheet Metal Chassis V.2
 

I forgot to mention again. This entire frame will be made out of 6061 T6 .090". My sheet sponsor doesn't have a problem bending or cutting this alloy.

Re: pic: 4587-Sheet Metal Chassis V.2
 

Idk if I am doing this right but, It now looks like a block of Swiss cheese..

http://prntscr.com/406s5y

Re: pic: 4587-Sheet Metal Chassis V.2
 

Just a thought, can you make the wheel wells thinner by moving the pulleys that connect the two modules to the same shaft as the new gear for the MiniCIMs?

Also make sure to look at access holes for the motor mounting screws and which tool you would use to replace them. Same with shaft collars, and retaining rings.

Overall its looking really nice, I'll probably be borrowing some elements of this if we are given another flatfish field.

Re: pic: 4587-Sheet Metal Chassis V.2
 

Unrelated to the reason for the picture, but I would change the front (or rear) frame member mounting method. While it makes sense to do this from a structural standpoint, I'm not sure it makes sense from a maintenance standpoint. If you ever have to replace the front (or rear) member, you will have to remove a side to actually remove it. Hopefully, this never becomes an issue, but in the unfortunate event that it does...

Overall, I like the concept and design.

EDIT:
I missed the fact the bellypan is the same piece of material as the front and rear "members". You can disregard my comment in this application; however, it is still good to keep that in mind when designing.

Re: pic: 4587-Sheet Metal Chassis V.2
 

Big squares save even more weight for less machining cost.

Consider switching your ribs and some of your other parts to 060. You get a 33% weight savings all while taking less machine time with 060. It is quite challenging to take out the same weight out of something that is 090 thick.

Re: pic: 4587-Sheet Metal Chassis V.2
 

I like that idea, however looking at it, it would make the module only about 1/4" smaller due to the fact that the versa wheel is so wide becasue of the versa keys. If I wanted to make the module smaller than the versa key on one side of the wheel would need to be milled off. Even though that is not hard to do, I would rather not make the versa wheel a "custom part" in order for it to fit in the butterfly module.

As for access holes, we will be using retaining rings and right-angle allen keys down there to be able to get in there. Not too big of a deal considering that I don't expect to ever need to do maintenance to a module while still on the robot. The whole module will come out if you remove 2 retaining rings. The only "hard to reach" item is the motors which really isn't too bad

Re: pic: 4587-Sheet Metal Chassis V.2
 

Removing the module requires removing the hex shafts and from dealing with it this year I would try to avoid it at all costs. You don't have time during a competition to do that. During events we had motors come a little loose even with lock tight on the bolts. Someone mentioned thread locking bolts in another thread that I'm probably going to look at for mounting CIMs next year. The other idea that I might look into is doing something like 148 did with Raptor and other robots where they have plates that mount to the CIMs that have easy access fasteners that make swapping motors easy.

Also have you thought about a way to retain the bearing? Our press fits (which I'll admit weren't good to start with) came loose during the season and made maintenance even harder.

Re: pic: 4587-Sheet Metal Chassis V.2
 

In situations where the bearing isn't geometrically retained we like to use bolts or rivets to retain the bearing.

Re: pic: 4587-Sheet Metal Chassis V.2
 

Knowing that, I will make a plate that allows you to mount both motors as a pair and then bolt them via the other side like 148's Raptor. I will also use our heavy duty lock tight on the bolts, which has never come loose on our drivetrain wheels this year.

Hadn't thought about it but R.C. has a great idea with the rivets. I like that method and probably will use that method it it ever becomes a problem. To prepare for the press fit issue, I did however subtract .003" from the bearing bore hole so the bearing would have a tighter fit. Should I subtract more from the hole size for a press fit or will that be tight enough?