Toughbox Assembly
 

Has anyone else had problems assembling the toughbox? I cannot get the large bearing over the large shaft. I tried using force but it barely starts and gets stuck. Any recommendation to getting this piece on. I am afraid if I use to mush force it will get started and I wont be able to get it back off.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

We had difficulty with getting the pins. We had to get extras before we were successful.

Good luck.

We are a Rookie team and the AndyMark Toughbox was our first successful assembly in FIRST.

One thing down and counting.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

Someone else was having trouble with the large bearing. You may need to make sure it's straight first.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

We had the same issue with the bearing. It appears to me that the finish on the shaft is not very good. When it was turned to size there are small ridges remaining on the shaft. To correct the problem take some abrasive cloth and remove a small amount of material. I did this on our small lathe using an emory cloth to smooth out the finish. The bearing slips on easily after the finish is improved.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

We had some trouble too, but I took it to be because of the close tolerance. The bearing has to be perfectly straight to slide on smoothly. A dab of grease on the shaft helps. We also used a deep well socket and tapped gently with a hammer to get it set.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

i am having the same problems with it. ty will try these suggestions

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

Things that you can do to make the bearing go on to the shaft.

1. Put a dab of grease on the shaft and "wiggle" the bearing down onto the shaft.
2. Use emory cloth or scotch brite pad to smooth the surface of the shaft.

***Do not try to lathe down the shafts*** The dimensions of the "trouble" shafts that I have seen do not require more then 5 minutes of scotch brite/ emory cloth work.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

Toughbox Assembly Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Jpj_aQHYE

-Oris-

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

lathe??? our teacher had to spend about 10 minutes per shaft with a sheet of sandpaper sanding it down to size. but it works now so woot! note: try to sand evenly so it wont turn into a metal oval

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has any one mounted the toughbox? I am a little iffty on how i want to attach it to my frame, suggestions?

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

Use the provided transmission mounts with the kit bot.

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Today we were looking at assembling them (possibly reducing them to one stage for speed...) and i found that the pinions would not fit on the CIMs. They go on about 1/4", then they get stuck.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

This is WAY cutier than the "Baker Act"....nice job Baker family, and Kyle you too!

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

My team had the same problem. You can use a deep well socket and lightly tap the gear down onto the shaft. You can also lightly scotch brite the shaft of the CIM.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

We used a rubber mallet to get the bearing onto the shaft. To get it back off, we put a bolt in the end and put the bearing on top of a vice so that the shaft was inside and the assembly is resting on top. Simply use a mallet to hammer the bearing back off or for a more safe approach (as to not strip any threads), try pushing down on the bolt.

Our toughbox's are assembled nicely and our stuff should be coming any day now so that we can install two more CIM's. Are we supposed to get a shipping confirmation from Andymark? We have not gotten ours yet and we placed our order before 3pm cst on tuesday.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

Warming the bearing a little, even by just holding it in your hands for a while can help. Just make sure someone hasn't been holding the shaft too. A friend of mine used to rebuild electric motors, big ones, and when it was time to put the bearings on he would grab them out of a hot plate and drop them on. without heat they went on tough with a hammer.

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We "persuaded" them with a mallet. Working carefully, of course.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

Our team found that sanding down the large output shaft helps to get the large bearing on. To sand it evenly, we put a belt sander face-up on a table, and then rotated while pressing it onto the sander.

As for getting the gear onto the CIM shaft, we just used a padded hammer to lightly tap it in.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

Today we assembled the transmissions, and they had several issues. First, the roller pins did not go in very easy (i think the hole was a tad bit too small) and they "unravelled". We got the first one in with some persuasion, but it had some "mushrooming" that we had to squish back so the gears would fit. The second transmission was even worse. The fist pin bent, and when trying to remove it, we accidentally broke it off. We drilled out what we could, then tried another one in hopes that it would push out the remains of the first. The second one got bent, but we got it out and finally got the third to work.
The second issue we had was the small gear for the second stage in one of the trannies wasn't quite big enough to fit on the shaft, so we had to sand a little on the shaft, but it is still a press fit.
Our third problem was one of the pinions was way too tight to fit on the cim. It was so tight we had to put it in a vise and persuade it (i know this is bad for the motor, we were already planning on ordering extras. We were in a bit of a hurry, we wanted to finish our prototype drivebase.).
Other than these assembly problems, i really like the Toughboxes. They are simple, and plenty strong. They are also an improvement over the older AM single speeds, being symmetric and all. I think our current plan is to reduce them to single stage gearboxes for the competition drivebase.

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Why didn't you ream the gear? :)

(oh yeah...Matt knows about the reamers, he was working on something else)

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now we think of that...

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We have had similar problems with the roll pins and large shaft.
We bent two pins trying to get them inserted. We were using an arbor press to insert them. When the pin was flush with the opposite side they would mushroom. We went and inserted spilit roll pins.
The large shaft was .002 too big. We put the shaft in the chuck of our drill press and used emory cloth to get it down so it the bearing would slide on.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

we had similar problems too, to get the bearing on, we used a peice of pvc pipe the same size as the shaft and hit it with a mallet numerous times.

we also had problems getting the gear on to the CIM shaft

also, did anyone else notice that the larger gear that is supposed to "rest" against the roll pin is very loose on the hex shaft?

It seems like these transmissions are just all around crap.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

Ugh…

Trying to put in the roll pins today was very frustrating.

We tried putting the first pin into one of the output shafts, and the shaft caught the end of the pin and unraveled it a bit. The second pin went in, but the top mushroomed and eventually fell into pieces, leaving us with a plugged hole and only two roll pins left (the ones from the second gearbox).

After completely destroying two titanium carbide bits trying to drill the pin out, we went out and bought a new 3/32" bit and enlarged the hole in the second shaft. The metal the shaft is made of is easy to drill with a good bit and drill press. The pin went into that shaft with a more reasonable amount of force, and it's also plenty secure.

We're going to have to do something else to clear the hole in the first shaft, though. There are fragments of one of the drill bits left in there, which makes it nearly impossible to drill out with anything we have, and nothing budged when we tried to punch it out.

Any ideas?

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

try to drill a new hole

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Hi we also had some problems with getting the roll pin into the output shaft. It broke in the hole and we had serious problems getting it out:( We fixed it with brute force and now it's in position.

But i need your help. One of our gearboxs is rattling when we run the motor. The large cluster gear is knocking against it's bearing and making a bad noise. We've greased it up and done several refits. Any suggestions?

PS anyone going to the florida regionals?

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We found the gearbox to fit very poorly and then a more detail inspection determined it had not been deburred and many of the components were not square and out of round........:ahh:

in the process of re-machining everything!

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I haven't actually read all these posts, so someone may have already pointed this out, but there is an assembly video for the toughbox on youtube

I'm from a rookie team, and that's how we did it (while in our school's LRT/special ed office using their computer and a table we dragged across the room)

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It worked mostly for us, like Seti said, but we did some small part wrong so now we've run into bulging-gearbox-syndrome. We took it apart, since bulging clearly isn't right, but our teacher had to leave, so we couldn't be at school anymore, so it'll have to wait till our Tuesday meeting.

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Did anyone else have problems with the holes not lining up? The piece of extrusion interferes with the bolt path just a little. Looks like I'll have to go at it with a file.

First one of our gearboxes comes without 4 holes drilled, now that one fits after I drilled them myself, but the one that I thought was fine doesn't line up. I never had this many problems with kit gearboxes, ever...

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

I assembled both of our tough boxes yesterday in about an hour and a half with a lot of interruptions. I had no major problems what so ever assembling it. For the roll pins I got a metal hammer and put the shaft on a table with a hole in it. As i tapped in the pin the excess in the opposite side of the shaft went in the hole. Took about a minute. The hardest part for me was getting the gears on our Cims. The two from the kit of parts this year have a better keyway design than those from years previous. So when i put the key onto the shaft it was a bit hard but nothing to bad.

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We did something similar. The chassis was done first, but the tranny guys had to go find some grease. (For a quick fix for the lack thereof, we found some old FP gearboxes--those have more grease than you can shake a stick at--I'd say at least enough for five or six Toughboxes and the FP will still run well.)

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Although I was at a track meet and didn't get to see, supposedly our gearboxes are properly put together. However, the team wants epoxy, now, since the bearings apparently keep falling out. Unusual? Anybody else run into this?

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Is any team going to mount their Toughboxes with the KOP chassis turned upside down? We are considering this option to get lower to the ground for lower center of gravity. I have looked thru the post but cannot find any information concerning this option. We are a Rookie team and will take any advice. We are concerned about removing parts of the chassis and losing the integrity and strength of the chassis.

We have difficulty with the roll pins. We went thru all four and had to go to Harbor Freight to buy new ones. They are put together now and we ran a practice test this past weekend on the KOP chassis.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

How loud are these supposed to be while running?

While I don't expect everything to be "whisper quiet" one of our more experienced mechanical mentors noted how loud it was while under power with a single CIM, and commented that things may be pressing against each other making things louder than they "should be" from his experience.

Then again, I'm sure the sound resonance of making one gearbox side out of a lexan type material also turned the normal noise from it running it into a speaker box pretty much. (As opposed to it being made out of cast aluminum or some other cast type material that is better at sound and vibration dampening).

We're certainly not going to be taking a decibel meter to the gearbox, but just wondering how loud it should be??? :confused:


You apparently didn't get the "joy" (:rolleyes:) of using the Banebots last year then did you? The pins were too small and just fell out under normal conditions...
That sucked... repeatedly over the course of the season, for many many teams.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

NEVER use epoxy to hold the bearings in, that may seep into the bearing and cease it.

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We had 4 BaneBots gearboxes last year. Assembly was a breeze, and we never had to touch them once after mounting. They went through the whole season of competition and PARCX without a single problem.

I heard some teams had problems with them, I guess we just got lucky then.

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I'm there with you. Every time we turn the SIMS on while attached to the Toughbox, I stop in my tracks. They sound terrible and I keep saying that something just isn't right. Last night I commented that I hope they have a lot of extras at the competitions.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

If the bearings want to fall out, they've probably been put in from the wrong side.

If the gearbox is extremely noisy, it's possible that one of the gears has been installed upside down and the gear is not being held away from the bearing by the tiny "bump" around the center hole.

If the gear tooth sensor mounting holes either put the sensor too far out from the gear or require long standoffs to reach the gear, it sounds like the lexan plate might be flipped 180 degrees from its proper orientation.

Re: Toughbox Assembly
 

A quick comment.
Be careful when tightening the screws holding the lexan cover on. Cracking will most likely occur. I believe we are going to replace the lexan cover with an aluminum one because of seeing this phenomenon already in the lexan plate.


And a quick question to all:
Anyone have any troubles with the largest gear in the toughbox rubbing against the top of the 2nd washer stacked on the shaft of the CIM motor output shaft under it's spur gear when assembled?

We seem to be having some rubbing issues.. so we intend to pursue that at a later day.