Tytus,
You can change the units on 3dsmax to inches and feet under the customize menu I think it is. On that menu is a units setup.
Eric

Amazing tutus.. that looks nearly like the suspension I drew up for my mentors..

1 question tho.. how do you plan on keeping any chains or kevlar intact.. in your design you have no motors showing so I assume the drive source is elsewhere. What happens ( and this may rarely happen in FIRST application.. but just a question ) when 1 side goes up and the other goes down.. you will have cause your chain to be on a angle to the drive. and run a high risk of it to come off.. or snap.. or not mesh with the sprockets correctly. The gear box would have to move in sink the wheel well dealio.. or.. it would have to be mounted on the wheel itself.. which in your situation would be best... However.. you could use U-Joynts and a drive shaft.. but then that would kinda defeat the purpose of crab.. and you would be way too inefficient

only problem we discovered with crab + suspension would be keeping it light enough yet strong enough so that in constant highspeed ramming matches ( which is first ) your suspension would not snap and your wheels fall to the floor.

Dan

Tytus,
What benefit do you get from putting your swerve module on some suspension? It seems like a significant amount of added complexity/weight/space for very little gain.

These kind of considerations are things you should think about while designing.

What will I get out of this?
What is it going to cost me?
Is it worth it?

Based on the historical FIRST games, I don't see any pressing need for a suspension system on a robot. Maybe if we went to a really rough/bumpy field.... but otherwise... you'd be better off spending the weight on the "ball mechanism" on top of the robot. :D ;)

It still looks cool.
A "coax swerve" is something I've been playing with for a while now. It gives you the option to use a CVT/Shifting Swerve drive.
If you are interested, check out team 998's bot from 2003. They had a working version of this.

Keep designing, keep thinking of new ideas, and good luck.

John

The suspension would have been of great use on this years game.. it would have kept all 4 wheels in contact with the surfaces at all times.. while battling on the edge of the ramp ( at carpet and the top ) many times whoever got most traction could win.. no matter how strong the drive train. This sort of suspension would be of great gain in that situation

actually, the easiest way to do that would not be a suspension per se, but merely have one of the axles on a pivot of some sort. If you don't quite understand what i'm getting at, take a quick glance at the back two wheels of this robot. They pivot freely so as to always keep surface contact.

There were a couple robots that i remember at nationals that had similar designs (can't remember numbers though). It could be done with a swerve drive like this (since it is coaxial, you shouldn't run into chain or motor alignment problems). The advantage of a pivoting system like this is that it will always keep the weight equally devided among the four wheels. A traditional suspension will keep all wheels on the ground, but different wheels will apply differing amoungts of force to the ground (making it less efficient.