Chief Delphi - Robot Carts

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Our cart has 4 wheel steering, which makes it real easy to get throught the crowds at the Regionals and Atlanta. We are planning to add an extruded top to make it easier to place the robot on it each year, with each design. We currently have two pieces of extrusion cross members that the robot sits on and we move their position each year. This allows the entire bottom of the machine to be up for maintenance and repairs. We never have to take the robot off the cart to make any repairs.

We designed a cart/create combo for transporting BOB. Here it is in cart from and in partial create from. When its a create the wheels and handle come off, of course, and the base turns upside down and the sides are attached. The top of the create becomes a table for our pit, with a removable shelf. The sides of the create double as a pit wall for the back of our pit with a rod for hanging coats.

We've since had to redesign it to comply with the create rules about supporting a certain weight. ( I'm just to lazy to look up the exact weight ) It also has been painted with out colors to be way more attractive.

Team 1713 (K Island Gears) had a really cool cart last year, equipped with underglow.
Our cart can be seen to the left of it. We put diamond plate steel for the bottom and welded galvanized steel chain to make the handlebars.

We've been using a simple grey cart, four wheels, a handle that one may hang things on. The green underglow and shelf for our compressor box was added last year. This year we may or may not build/buy/somehow acquire another cart, depending on time and member availability. Although, since it's painful enough to watch your robot hit and get hit, it would be nice not to associate back pain with fixing said robot in the pits...

We have a simple cart made out of plywood, a few 2x4s, and some pressure treated 4x4s that my dad had left over from when we built our deck. It used to roll on crappy little Home Depot casters, but now it has some nice big 8" diameter ones that are rated to some insane amount (several hundred pounds each), which a mentor found at his work about to be thrown away. There is a partial shelf on the bottom that we usually use to store controls for transporting (our scouting stuff and batteries are down there often too).

Last year, it had a goofy paint scheme and some really messily wired lights on it, but the lights have been since ripped out (they released some magic smoke at Battle of Baltimore and burned the team member who realized the issue and fixed it [the rest of us thought the robot was about to go up in flames]), and I am hoping to repaint it in team colours sometime soon. The lights may come back in far fewer numbers and in a more tasteful arrangement (plus better wiring).

Actually, I have a cart-related question to ask, but first, some background: I would like to make the base coat of paint on our cart white, and then add logos and stuff in team colours. Some of our team members think that white is a bad idea because all the grease and junk would show up very well. I think that they exaggerate the issue and it isn't anything a quick wipe with a towel couldn't fix. So, my question is: does anyone have experience with white carts and how they look after/during a competition?

Team 1726's cart for the past two years...

Quote:

Originally Posted by s_forbes (Post 687795)

Team 1726's cart for the past two years...

That's the exact same thing 2175 used for a cart last year!

This year our cart is slightly better, we found a cart that supports the robot better and has a manual (pneumatic?) pump to raise it up to about table height.

1885 uses one of the golden carts from Home Depot. This year we're considering putting leftover 80/20 on it in such a way that the frame sits directly on the 80/20 and the wheels aren't touching it.