Re: Coolest 'Bot Carts
 

Yes, the wheel chair motors are free spining, and they also have a brake on them as well.

Re: Coolest 'Bot Carts
 

Lifting a robot with power from 12v batterie(s) would be a snap. Anyone ever use one of those deals the appliance installation people have where you plug a vaccum into it and it will lift your refrigerator right up? Its pretty cool, all you gotta do is give your refrigerator a tap and it will slide right across the kitchen. If you just got one of those and got an old (or new, we just like old stuff) inverter you should be set. Just vaccums are kinda loud, and you might have to use multiple batteries.

Re: Coolest 'Bot Carts
 

All of your carts sound really cool. Our cart pretty much is a dolly. If we every get really fancy, we might even use a bar stool racer that some of us are trying to build and drive that to the competitions and have the robot on the dolly towed to the racer. Our team doesn't really put much work or time into actually building a cart, but all of your carts sound pretty cool, especially the first one, the one powered by the wheelchair motors.

Re: Coolest 'Bot Carts
 

the best cart I've seen was the fork lift one, that one team had at the Canadian Regionals last year, forgot the team number though

Re: Coolest 'Bot Carts
 

My vote also goes to Truck Town Terror....er...Thunder.
Totally Awesome :ahh:

Wayne Doenges
CAD Mentor

Re: Coolest 'Bot Carts
 

the plans for our cart involve undercart lighting .... :ahh:

Re: Coolest 'Bot Carts
 

We were thinking about that, but our cart is also a shipping crate, we would have to take them off and put them on at each event. Its bad enough we have to place the motors and casters. But we were thinking of putting some neon tubes in the electronics area. All I have left to do is to put a coat of water seal on it, primer it and paint it all before robot ship date. We are going to paint it in a patriotic theme, red, white and blue flames. ( but if we screw up then it will be black with the team number and logo).

Re: Coolest 'Bot Carts
 

BOB's new cart will also be our shipper crate, our display case (for back of the pit) and a work table. The coolest part of this is that we will be under the 400# mark when we ship, and we will be able to re-use this every year. Photo's and drawings will be available soon.

Re: Coolest 'Bot Carts
 

team 549 is building the new cart as we speak...ok actually it's my twin brother, a friend, and myself, but still, we ARE building a new one. now i don't want to give away anything too much, but it is made out of 1 1/2" aluminum extrusion, with lexan/plexiglass sides. we also plan on the top being plywood but i'm going to paint it silver with blue flames (most likely, nothing is definite yet). obviously we'll have our stereo in it (it's actually a car stereo wired into our cart) and we'll be unvieling our spinners this year...yeah thats right, we'll have spinners, but not on our wheels, on our speakers. yes the front covers of our speakers will have spinners. we'll also either have some blacklights or some blue neons on it. i'll try and get some pics up tommorow after school.

Re: Coolest 'Bot Carts
 

Maybe it'll hold together a little better too? ;)

Again Thanks to Steve and Team 85 for letting us borrow your robot to show people what robotics is and to get our team started.

-Mike
-1654

Re: Coolest 'Bot Carts
 

If anyone recalls team 41's cart from 2002, it was the best cart I've seen, and not just bc it was my team's. It had 2 1.5' speakers, 4 car batteries powering it, a 400W amp, neons on the bottom, 3 air compressors, and 4 giant cylinders on each wheel that allowed us to bounce the whole cart up and down. It was amazing, and I think we are part of the reason that they banned putting your own music on :) it was great fun tho. I wish i still had a pic of it... it was scrapped bc the former seniors used their own speakers batteries amp and neons to build it.

Re: Coolest 'Bot Carts
 

Be careful with the motor driven cart though. If I recall at nationals their were some large bumps to get over and some downward ramps and upward hills. Also their were narrow spaces to squeeze through. That might be an issue, but its still a cool thought.


GO 1403!!!

Re: Coolest 'Bot Carts
 

We took that in consideration and made the cart small enough to fit through a standard doorway (30 some odd inches wide). And with the speed bumps the cart is front wheel drive and has 3" ground clearance which it might need some help getting over the bumps but not much. and we have practiced driving umm somewhat, i don't think donuts in the school hallway counts.

Re: Coolest 'Bot Carts
 

Our cart is pimping, with our quadri-wheel setup. That's right folks, quadri-wheels. Then we have our all too cool pushy-ma-thing-a that we push our awesome cart with. And to put the robot on? A piece of plywood... oh yeaaah.

Re: Coolest 'Bot Carts
 

Here are some pictures of the cart in its current state.