Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

What teams use 3d printed items to make mounting easier/take up less space? stuff like this:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:656030
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:640102
If so, do you think it makes these sort of things any easier? Which electrical components do using these improve most upon? Are the examples above the type of thing that you use? If not could you please leave a link to what you use? I'm looking into finding mounts and stands that can best make use of space in case we have another low bar predicament. Thank you.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

We designed a 3-D printed talon mount and used it this year, I'll try to post a picture of them later on if I can find them.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

We used some 3D printed mounts this past season, but mostly for weight reasons.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1494829

We also had a status light mount, but it broke a few times on Einstein and I plan to redesign it for the next season. (you can see the duct tape in the third picture on Thingiverse)

With a recent donation of several printers, we'll probably have a lot more 3D printed space/weight saving solutions in the coming season.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

We used 3d printed mounts as well as 3d printed cases for electronics last season and intend to continue that trend this year as well. Also, 3d printed spacers... custom sizes are so easy to make.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

this year we used one to hang a fisheye len on our camera and another one to hold the bearing for the output shaft on our drive gears.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

We have been using 3d printed parts for a variety of things for the last 3 years.
Speed controller mounts, custom encoder and potentiometer mounts, camera mounts etc. It allows us to custom design mounts for relatively low stress areas. That said, we have also printed pinions for transmissions that worked surprisingly well! Those were replaced with steel pinions for competition, but they didn't fail on their own.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

This year we used one for a camera mount and another for an ultrasonic sensor mount.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

not so much a mount as a casing, but we have had issues with our cameras being broken off during matches, so we built a case for ours.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

We designed a really nice 3D printed mount for the new radio, the bolt holes on the bottom, that was really nice looking and held well. As you all know, this was then destroyed as a broken acrylic board required us to redo a lot of wiring. In the heat of competition, some things just don't hold us as well as electrical tape around a piece of metal frame a few times.

I plan on finishing the Inventor files for that mount and posting it on thingiverse soon, if you're interested.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

Some interesting things we did with 3D printed parts this year include a motor mount, a winch with spool, and some climber hooks.

Here are the parts and analysis in a very basic level presentation about all of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQWwjdSNcno

FEA starts at 17 minutes.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

We utilized 3D printing this season for our shooting mechanism. As the rotating part of our shooter was a pool noodle epoxied to a PVC pipe, we designed end caps to go in the pipe so it could be mounted on a 1/2" hex shaft. One of our mentors then printed them in fiberglass-reinforced plastic at his work. Attached is a render of it.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

We use a great deal of 3D-printer mounts! It seems as though we're constantly making more. We've used them for everything from air tanks to pressure gauges to Talon SRXs to limit switches to cameras, to basically everything else we can think of :)

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

We 3D printed a battery mount by p̶i̶r̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶t̶ downloading the STEP from AndyMark and converting it to STL.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

Be careful printing parts under pressure. A lot of these polymers need to be really thick to prevent fatigue and failure in that kind of loading scenario. The old clippard tank recall comes to mind.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

I think this was in regards to mounts. Not air tanks.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

We used them for camera mounts, ultrasonic sensor mount, and pneumatic tank mounts (after finding out http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-2008.htm is too small for http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-2479.htm, even though they say it's the recommended mount). And it's way too small.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

Just a quick run over the things we have printed in recent history:

• Versaplantery Gearbox Mounts
• Pneumatic Cylinder Mounts
• Encoder Mounts
• NavX MXP Covers
• OM5P-AN Radio Mount
• Aiming light Mount

We have done a lot more for prototyping and proof of concept models, but these are things that have ended up on our robots in the past three seasons. We are looking into possibly expanding how much work we do in the 3D printed space, but we will see the extent of that next season.

EDIT: I realize that the OP was asking for mounts that save space in mounting electronics, and that I mentioned more than just that. Thought I would show the realm of what we have done.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

Did you actually order these or was there a typo in your post? The Andy Mark pages you reference do NOT show them as being compatible. And those pages describe the components diameters as being 2.5" and 2.7". While that may be trite, I think cost is a concern too. Printing a clip like the one shown, for our team, would be much more expensive (filament isn't cheap) than the COTS part.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

Not 100% sure what is or is not compatible, but the second page (tank) he linked states "A mounting bracket is available to order (am-2008), but is not included when ordering just this item."

We buy ABS at ~$12/lb, so the 0.066lb bracket should cost roughly $0.80 to print vs. the $2 list price (which is also very reasonable). While I wouldn't get in the business of printing them to save my team money, if I happened to need one and my options were to rush order one (and pay shipping on a single item) versus print one and have it in a few hours, I could see justifying printing one.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

My team had severely limited space on our robot which required us to be pretty creative on where we place our electronics. We ended up creating several 3D Printed Mounts that helped hold our Electronics spread throughout the robot in creative places.


I believe my team has a document on our drive with a small sentence or two explaining each part. If anyone would like a further look I can add it later.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

One of our sponsors had a Flashforge 3d printer they grabbed off Amazon when it was dirt cheap (around $700) and we borrowed it for a few meetings at the end of the season.

All of the red parts on the robot were 3d printed plus more you can't see.

We used them to print our own hex spacers and printed a ton of extras in 1/8" increments. Made later additions a breeze.

Instead of buying sprocket spacers for our wheels we just printed our own to save $4 a wheel x 16 wheels plus spares.

On the left we 3d printed a versaplanetary stage so we could offset the intake motor so we could mount our gearboxes the same but have enough clearance so when the intake rotated back we didn't risk it hitting an output shaft.

Other items we printed was a USB/Ethernet tether connector board that was really useful having one spot to plug in. We also printed some ultrasonic mounts that would snap on to the rings of our PVC but we never got them on the robot.

125 has used 3d printed parts for several years and had advocated that printing spacers is much easier and consistent compared to making them by hand. We agree!

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

Over the past 4 years 148 used 3D printing for a number of applications. Normally printed parts are used to prototype and refine the concept, as well as test packaging, before parts are machined for strength and durability reasons.

A few of the parts prototyped using 3D printing over the past 4 years includes:

• camera mounts
• targeting light mount
• various encoder mounts
• encoder gears
• electronic system mounts
• choo-choo cam
• noodle-fan mount

The most impressive (to me) application of a 3D printed part on a 148 robot was the custom traction wheels used on our 2013 robot, Viper. These wheels incorporated a 2.5" OD traction wheel with the required pulley for the smallest iteration of the Butterfly Drive used to date.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

Our team uses our 3D printer almost exclusively for mounting things like sensors and motor controllers.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

We've used 3D printed parts for a number of years now, I think our first ones probably went onto robots around the 2008 timeframe.

Since then we've done all sorts of stuff from simple brackets for sensors/electronics, to protective housings for cameras, molds for urethane components and even bearing blocks for power transmission in our 2015 elevator.

We picked up some new sponsorship in the off-season from Markforged. We just started making parts, but to say we're blown away may be understating it. The parts strength and finish is unbelievable. Parts are incredibly stiff. We're gonna be doing some testing on our 2016 bot in the fall off-seasons and maybe even pushing the limits in some totally new realms that were thought to be 'unprintable' by myself and probably all of the larger FRC community. Pic below of our first part. Nylon base with carbon fiber wound inside each layer. First 4 layers on either side had carbon wrapped concentrically around the contours. The middle 32 layers had isotropic carbon laid down, rotating 90deg each layer :)



-Brando

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

We use 3d printed items to mount cameras and a case for our gyro. As well as pneumatic tank mounts. We used the 3d printer to also make frame caps in 2015 (recycle rush) because we didn't use bumpers.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

So what is this part for? What kind of load do you expect it to see? And if you don't mind me asking, was this printed on a custom Printer, or just custom materials? And how long did this print take?

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

This is a 1:1 swap of our drivetrain gearbox plates, same exact geometry, etc. The part will see some fairly dynamic loads. Historically, plastic gearbox plates are a non-starter as you really need the stiffness of a metal material to keep the plate from deflecting under high load in the drivetrain. Small amounts of deflection can screw up your gear mesh and lead to a number of different failure modes.

This was not printed on a custom printer, it was printed on a Markforged Mark Two printer: https://markforged.com/product/mark-...fessional-kit/

The print took a bit under 3 hours to complete.

-Brando

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

That's really quite impressive. Any reason why the part looks to have such a low resolution? Do you need flat edges to better adhere the carbon fibers wrapped around the first four layers?

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

I had a bad STL import and wanted to print just to see what I was dealing with (aka laziness). Next iteration will be nice and smooth.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

What printers do yall use?

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

We haven't printed any mounts yet, but we have a LulzBot taz 6 along with one other I don't know the name of.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

New for us this year is a Fusion3 F400. It's a nice printer and we've been happy with the support. They are also local for us so that helps.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

Not a "basic level presentation" at all; it's AN EXCELLENT ONE.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

We used them to mount switches / levers to be used on our lifting arm. Very easy to make, holds them down well, and if it breaks you can simply replace it.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

I have some parts from the Mark I and Mark II on my desk and they are nearly indestructible unless you twist them heavily, heat them up, or use some other process to de-laminate the layers. I have found it hard to do enough of any of those besides heat it up. When the new machine comes out the nylon will be replaced with a much stronger material making these parts strength/budget one of the best machines you can build robot parts on.

Maybe they will let me print some more parts this season....

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

1678 does quite a fair bit of 3D printed parts for mounting electronics. It makes space management much easier. We also make a lot of shaft spacers with 3D printing.

Re: Do you use 3d printed mounts?
 

We use them for sensors occasionally. We also have been known to use them for RSL mounts.