Re: Electrical Board Mounting
 

We mount everything on to lexan, and attach it to the robot with either velcro or screws. Most years we have also had to hinge portions of it so we could work on the robot.

Re: Electrical Board Mounting
 

We had a 3/4 inch plywood board, with a piece that stood verticle on one end. The height of the protrusion was the width of the c-rio, and we mounted the light to this piece also (we had a clear lid.) we mounted everyhing except the main breaker by screws, and we mounted the board to the chassis with bolts. We screwed zipties to the board to create wire "highways".

Re: Electrical Board Mounting
 

If anyone saw our robot hanging, the space with messages on the bottom was where most of our electronics were mounted (on the top side). In the middle of the rear chassis pan, we had our 2 AM shifters, 4 CIM's, and 2 shift pistons, but in front of that we had the cRio sitting sideways, with the side against a piece of polycarb attached to the bottom, and the crio mounted to the front flange with bolts and plastic selves. At the rear, we riveted a piece of perforated aluminum, to which we mounted the majority of the electronics (4 Victors, 2 Spikes) with zip ties. We also zip tied all of the wiring, the heavier wires were zip tied to the rear axle, which ran directly behind the electronics. The DSC was in between the two transmissions. Above the rear chassis pan, we had the PD board floating on sheet aluminum brackets, bolted to the brackets, and another electronics pan hanging from two chassis members (riveted). The remaining two Victors and two Spikes were zip-tied to this. The three lighting power supplies (off of two of the Spikes) were attached with velcro to a 2" wide frame member. The radio was attached with velcro to a plate on the back of the arm tower, sideways, with two zip ties for the radio, two to keep the wiring tight, and around 12" total of duck tape for the connections.

Last year, we had a 4-wheel crab drive, and had a module on each side of the robot (each module had a front and back pod). We hid the Jaguars and Victors on two perforated plates inside the modules.

In 2006, 07, and 08 we had a 6wd drop-center, so we put a piece of perforated aluminum somewhere in the middle and mounted the Victors, Spikes, and RC to this using zip ties for everything. Worked well.

Re: Electrical Board Mounting
 

Nice wiring! When wiring is this planned out and neat it eliminates many potential problems and makes troubleshooting so much easier.

Most of our electrical components were mounted with screws and lockwashers onto a 3/16" Lexan sheet mounted low to help with center of gravity. We used many zip ties and some wireway where we could. Our electrical board slid into two U-chanel pieces of aluminum so it could be slid out to work on. We used the Igus track to run the wires up to the chassis where it branched out to the motors, solenoids, etc. One big advantage of having a seperate electrical panel is that it can be assembled, wired and tested while others are working on the rest of the robot.

Re: Electrical Board Mounting
 

What we've done 2009 and this year was mount the cRIO on top of a piece of polycarbonate with a length of surgical tubing around the bottom edge to act as a cushion.

The rest of the electronics go wherever we find space on the bot. Though this year I was able to convince our electronics guy to put all the Jags on a vertical piece of poly to save space. Unfortunately the Jags ended up mounted behind the cRIO, making repairs a BIT difficult.

Re: Electrical Board Mounting
 

Please note that many of these photos show off some very nice designs. The Cheesy Poofs have a very efficient design in that the high power circuits are all centrally located, and the high current runs to speed controllers are all short and direct. Please note that the battery, circuit breaker and PD are right in the middle of the robot. This design reduces wire loss to a minimum. You receive an Al's Gold Star for electrical design.

Re: Electrical Board Mounting
 

because of the very limited space we had this year, we mounted everything in four (reasonably close together) sections.
-we mounted the cRIO sideways along the back of our robot on a sheet of lexan.
-the PD board, the jaguars and some victors were on 3 sheets of shelf liner which was attatched to the aluminum bottom of the robot.
(after some testing, we found that 3 layers shelf liner was an inexpensive way to provide excellent shock absorbing. :] )

-the DSC was mounted up and to the left. it was inaccessible in its original location down in the bottom of the robot.
-the final section was sideways on the left of the robot on a sheet of lexan. it contained the main breaker and the rest of the victors.

this setup might sound very spread out, but it was so compact, we were worried about the Jaguars overheating. because of this we mounted one of the server fans above the whole setup, and the wireless bridge was next to that.

we learned about wire management the hard way.:o

Re: Electrical Board Mounting
 

Ours this year used 1/4" smoked polycarbonate and some random plastic trays from a 3d printer we used to have. Note DON'T EVER attempt to hide wires like I did this year. When you discover your board has an issue that you need to diagnose you WILL feel the burn! :ahh:

Re: Electrical Board Mounting
 

Sorry I meant to say "we always use bolts"
Though it is safer as you're less likely to have a component come free while traveling at high speeds.

Oh and just to prove everyone makes mistakes, I made not only the nice panel that I previously posted, but the year before that I had a cool idea to make a removable box, well:


Now, this isn't such a bad idea so long as you find an effective way to deal with masses of PWM cables. I think I handled the power cables well with the Anderson connectors, you can see 2 plugs with all of the power cables contained coming out of the top. Along with a battery plug. It would've been clean if it was just those 3 plugs, but when we added sensors going into the box, I just had no well-planned way to handle them and it became a great mess.

Now it still only took about 4 minutes to remove or install but only about 10 seconds of that was spent on the power cables. :)

If you're planning for an electronics box, make sure you look at all the examples out there from the past on chief delphi and such and learn from mistakes and improve upon existing designs.

More photos of the box:

Re: Electrical Board Mounting
 

Hiding wires is ok when done properly. In 2005 we used a plastic channel for our wires. It had a removable top so that in normal operation the wires were hidden but if we needed to see them we could take the top off. Hiding wires is also doable as long as you properly label wires.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/19720 (2005 RUSH electrical box)

Re: Electrical Board Mounting
 

This is the best way to go, if you have the room. Not only does it look neat but it is faster and easier to wire, troubleshoot and change and the cabling is protected.

Labeling is also important. We label all wires, cables and components using the sheet and line number from its location on the schematic so it can be found quickly on the schematic.

Re: Electrical Board Mounting
 

this is really useful

Re: Electrical Board Mounting
 

Jessica,
Now that the label issue has been broached I will discuss our method. 3M makes a tape marking product that is ten different colors (EIA color code, look it up) and we mark everything in the path. The motor, the controller, the wires, the PWM and the breaker and it's position in the PD. We even mark the position on the side car where the PWM goes. If we are searching out a problem on the Blue motor, we check to see if the Blue speed controller is powered and lit. If not we check to see if the Blue breaker is in place. If all looks good there we check the blue PWM cable is connected at both ends to the Blue locations. When we have more than ten objects that have to be marked, we simply use a black tape with a colored tape. The tape dispenser is a little pricey at $30 from Digikey but it is worth it. We need no schematics, troubleshooting is as fast as looking into the robot, and it easy enough for everyone to understand.
If you search color marking or color labels you will find several references. If you search on the First website, I think my electrical presentation is still available and it has pictures and other helpful hints.

Re: Electrical Board Mounting
 

Al, we do this as well, but we use several colors worth of tiny zip ties. 4 colors nets us up to 16 combinations. We haven't been very good at labeling sensor wire since many of the wires are thinner than the zipties can attach to with slipping -- so I'll get our lead to look into this tape. In '06/'07, we also used tiny dots of multiple colors of non-conductive nail polish but stopped because its legality was brought up and was somewhat vague.

Thanks for the update.

Re: Electrical Board Mounting
 

Al had posted a spreadsheet for detailing which item connects where a while back on CD-Media and we have really taken to that and using colored tape to identify components. We haven't used this in a competition yet but over the last 4 months of working on multiple projects during the off-season and now during the build-season this is a FANTASTIC way to go. As Al said, once things are installed there is no need for any schematics or for reading labels that twist/turn and are hard to read. We bought this from Amazon and works pretty well, however you probably want to avoid using the red or black tape for labeling components...

Also I can't find Al's original spreadsheet for documenting this, here is our version which is slightly modified but still performs the same function.