Very cool. Thank you.

We are working on improving our chain drive before IRI. I will pass the idea to our team.

After Buckeye? *cough* illegal *cough*... oh well. Good job guys. :) (poking some fun)

Umm no, it wasnt illegal. You were given till Wednesday after each regional you competed in to make any brand new parts that *werent* identical to ones on your bot during the competition (I think it was Wednesday, but whatever. You had a few days to make stuff)
[edit] After Buckeye only implies that it wasnt done at a competition :p
Cory

Gadget:

From the final Team Update:PARTS FABRICATION AFTER EVENTS
In order to better allow teams to replace robot components that fail or do not work well at
competition events, FIRST will adopt the following:
1. At the competition events, teams can build whatever they want:
• Spare parts;
• Replacement parts;
• Extra parts;
They must be fabricated on-site utilizing available fabrication resources. We are,
however, concerned about the potential for teams to over-utilize the competition machine
shop in the fabrication of new parts when the shop should be dedicated to repairing parts
required to keep robots running and able to participate. Therefore, a machine shop’s top
priority will be repairing parts with fabrication as time allows
2. After each event in which a team participates, the team has until midnight Wednesday
(local time) immediately following their event to repair and/or fabricate new
mechanisms and may bring these parts and mechanisms to any subsequent events. As
before, we must rely on the gracious professionalism of teams to adhere to the rules of
the FIRST Robotics Competition.

As for a picture of the guides: These were made immediately after the event in my basement on my own lathe out of my kitchen cutting board!!

I thought they said that berylium, titanium, and Kitchen cutting board were not allowable!;)

I retract my statement and shall promptly face the corner.

Evrything fits togeather But How is it asembled? Im shure after staring at it for a while ill get it But could someone save me some time please

First, you will take the flanged bearings (Teal Colored) and press them into the output stage gears (Green & Blue)(Ones that interface to the 3-finger Dog (Orange). Next, slide the shift shaft (Yellow) into the hole in the Hex Drive Shaft (Red). Next slide the three finger dog onto the hex shaft and pin it to the shift shaft.(Pin Shown also in Orange) Now slide the 2 output stage gears onto the hex shaft. Next put on the other 2 flange bearings (White & Purple) Onto the Hex Output Shaft (Red) Next weld the second stage onto the shaft (Shown in Silver above right to the output stage). Lastly press/weld the first stage onto the CIM motor.(Hard to see in the pic) Mount all three on one of the gearbox sideplates, add in the cross members, and attach the other gearbox side and POOOF you have a shifting gearbox.

Note: This is the extremely simplified instructions but assembling the box is pretty easy, making it is more difficult.

Are there one or two bearings in each output stage gear?

There used to be two on the Design from 2002, there is only one shown on this newer smaller version for 2003

Does it work okay with just one? Well, I suppose it does from what I read about the transmission's success. But wouldn't the gear wobble some on the shaft with only one bearing in there?

EDIT: One more question, what would be the pros and cons of machining the dog mates right into the hub of the gear as opposed to using a hubless gear and machining separate dog mates? I'm just thinking about less complexity.

The flanged bearings used are pretty beefy, they are about 1/4" thick so as long as your machining tolerances are good, there should be no wobble. You also want your tolerance very close on the bore of the output gears so that they dont' fall off the flanged bearings when they aren't engaged to the dog.

As for machining the dog mates into the gear, it is the way to go, we used separate dog mates and ended up welding them onto the hubless gears. Keep in mind that by machining them into the gears, the gearbox gets much narrower than if the dog mates protruded outwards. The dog mates themselves seemed more complex to machine than actually milling in simple pockets on a rotary table of a milling machine also.

wow..me thinks we should hire Matt for the team he seems to know more about the transmission then most the people on our team....

I can contest that even though the manufacturing of the box may not be the easiest in the world for teams the assembly of it is quite easy. I assembled and de-assembled ours multiple times. Buy the end of the season we had the assembly of the gearbox to around 30 minutes each. I haven't talked to Andy about the gearbox since ohhh the last day of nationals but i would think there would be a white-paper for it in the near future. (this is just pure speculation, not confirmed.)

I know there were several dozen man hours put in to assemble the parts at the school..so yes it was rather time consuming. Kyle is exactly right, the assembly was rather easy. I assembled 2 spares this year (early in the build when the mechanical team fell behind ;) otherwise I wouldn't be touching that stuff until after its already completed... :p) in almost no time at all.

I think Matt knows so much about it beacause he has one of his own, or team 226 or whatever. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...277#post163277