Attempting the impossible
 

Thats right, a chain-less drive train for an off season project. Any ideas?:rolleyes:

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

What do you mean impossible?

Why? Have you considered using timing belt? (See 125 in 2008 if I recall)

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

I believe you may be referring to a belt-driven drive train. Many teams have done this in the past. As long as the belts are properly tensioned, they can work as well as chain, with much less weight.

Here is a white paper on the topic.

Here is one of many threads discussing this.

Good Luck,
Ethan

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

Our team is attempting to achieve this over the summer, well at least we are thinking about trying to try it...

I'm not really sure how we would do this though because I'm not on mechincal, but I'm hoping we succeed. Our chains broke in our final matches in Atlanta.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

Impossible? I mean, I know AndyMark sells lots of stuff, but I didn't know they sold the Impossible as well!

In all seriousness, I think the Aztecs (157) did a timing belt drive in 2005. They may have continued doing them, but I haven't been to a regional with them since. Cyber Blue (234) did a great bit of research on belts vs. chains that you can find on CD-Media.

Hope that helps!

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

Team 51 used a chainless drive this year. It was 4WD and each wheel was gear driven by its own motor. The motor/gear/wheel assembly was made as a module and could bolt on to any corner of the robot.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

Better not tell Raider Robotix (team 25) its impossible; they've been doing it since 2003.

see also: 703, 1369, 103

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

May I ask why?

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

well i always did think that mechanum wheels were somewhat witch-craft....most of them are direct driven off a gearbox..no chains

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

Ours also had no chain, but that's easy with belts.:D

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

how about using shafts and bevel gears
Bruce

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

1517 was a belt drive this year, mecunams normally don't use chain as BEEKMAN said, I think 126 had a belt drive in 2008, and pretty much it is not that hard to have a chainless drive.

What type of drive are you guys considering? It does sound like a neat project to use something you haven't done before, I guess that is why they call it off-season, belt, direct drive, sprockets, other?;)

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

We used timing belt this year to great success. I still have to question why you are so adverse to chain. Properly set up, you should never break a chain. Maybe instead of finding an entire new way of transmitting power you should look at improving your current chain setup and figure out why it didnt work. If something was wrong in the chain setup, you will surely have the same issues with belt or direct drive as those really require even more precision and thought.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

Can you or someone else on your team elaborate on this a little bit more? I'm curious to how you actually broke chain, we've done some interesting (dumb) stuff with both #25 and #35 chain and have never actually broken the chain.

Usually, when teams have problems with chains it's because of implementation and not the actual chain itself. Proper alignment and tension have solved any issue that I've ever had with chains.

But, on the original topic, having a drive train that doesn't use chains is uncommon but not impossible. Personally, I'm biased towards the 25 method of building drive trains around gears, and I think I may experiment with this a bit in the off season. On thing you may want to consider about moving away from chains is that you'll need increased precision in your implementation to use just about anything else. I've found that #35 chain is pretty forgiving to loose tolerances, but gears and belts aren't...

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

If your "chains broke" in several matches, going chainless (unless you only have four wheels, each direct driven) via gears/belts will only make the problem worse. Gear and belts need higher tolerances than [35-pitch] roller chain does.

If your chains broke, it's probably because they were improperly tensioned or misaligned. Look at solving these problems before you write off chain and attempt something else. If you don't solve the root causes behind your chain failures, the same issues will affect whatever other drive train design you implement.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

Team 103, which I am proudly a part of, has beed using relatively the same drive train, which is completely gear driven, since 2007. We were inspired by our long-time friends, 25, and built a whole now drivetrain as an offseason project after the 2006 competition. We were also sick of the problems with chain and decided to revamp our design. We have had no serious problems with our drivetrain since then. Our system has been nearly flawless, and has proved us very well. This year we are planning to make a few modifications to lower the weight, but otherwise, a very solid drive train.

We modified our system in 2008 and 2009 to deal with restrictions and increase speed.

I am confident to say that we have one of the most powerful, allong with one of the fastest tank-style drivetrains in the FRC behind a few powerhouse teams.

If you have any specific questions, please pm me.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

Direct drive, good power, but drains batteries like crazy and if the drive shaft gets bent your in trouble.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

We did no chain last year and loved it!!

http://www.vandenrobotics.com/plogge...icture&id=1517

Those were Toughbox modules we made by adding a 1/2" hole in the corner of the toughbox for a dead shaft. Then mounted a gear directly on the wheel that meshed with a gear on the output shaft of the toughbox. Then used a pillowblock bearing on the opposite side of the wheel. This is a pretty straight forward direct gearing design, that most any team could do. Down side is using a gearbox for each wheel.

This year we tried belts, but didn't use the right size and couldn't get the tension right, so we reverted back to #35 chain. The most common way chain comes off is misalignment and/or lack of correct tensioning.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

I thought that team 25 had at one time an all gear driven drive that was modular. It was very heavy but it was very effective. I could be wrong but it has been a year our two.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

These words need to be emphasized; too often inexperienced teams are unable to identify this problem on their own.

This year and last we've used Andymark Toughboxes (nano this year) direct-drive to the wheels. The Toughboxes stood up to the banging up and down the bumps this year with cantilevered wheels and NO signs of wear, though we only did 1 competition. It's slightly heavier than a typical drive train, but we really liked the idea of 4 direct-driven wheels when dealing with the bumps.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

timing belts=BAD IDEA! we tried that year, and we had to switch to chain in the middle of regional #1. they were hard to tension, and we even shredded a belt!

my advice is shaft drive or direct drive. or stay with chain.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

This too can be addressed by Art's words above. It's not the belt, but the usage. Examine why it failed, rather than ditch an entire class of mechanical parts.

Timing belt AND chain have both been done to great success. They also have been done to great failure. Which it ends up being will depend on your implementation, attention to details, and design work.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

from experience, chain tends to have always worked, but belts tend to be way too much trouble.

one of our mentors used to be on a wisconsin team (fondy fire). being from there, he told us something we should have followed: "team 93 once tried to use belts. there is a reason why they never have since."

better yet, i found that someone from there said it here on CD on another thread:

source: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=68479 post #4


reasons to ban the belt from your drivetrain;

1. belts have a lesser surface of contact. therefore, they skip and slip under less torque

2. related to #1, belts are harder to tension as belts stretch at a faster pace.

3. weight- belt sprockets are HEAVY. unless you have access to a CNC or a very precise mill and operator. if not, you will pay a weight penalty.

4. length- chain can be made shorter and longer, belts cannot.


in the long run, it seems that belts are better in high speed, low torque situations. Chain is for lower speed higher torque situations. unless your wheels are <2" diameter, you can almost always count on high torque. and hence why belts never worked for us.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

The only belt failures I have come across in FIRST are an improperly tensioned, aligned, or designed system. Belts can be stronger and more precise than chain when correctly executed. Please run some numbers, and examine the use of belts in applications other than FIRST, as we tend to be a fairly trigger happy bunch at discarding solutions.



A correctly designed belt (the ones for high torque applications, ie part # 6486K116 from McMaster) will hold about even, if not more than equivalent sized chain (#25 in this case).

Incorrect. A Steel Belted belt (ie anything by Brecoflex) will not stretch under FIRST loads. Examine Outback Tracks as an example.

Again, false. SDPSI sells aluminum pulleys that are fairly lightweight, and can be hand lightened if need be. Proper design of a robot (ie proper weights set during design, and so on) should allow decently heavy pulleys (up to 1lb) without penalty. Being overweight is a result of sloppy design, and nothing more.

This one has merits, but again points back to design. If you need that much variance in the design, you shouldn't even be looking at belts.

I've built a 200lb robot that has pulled a FORD F150 in first gear (engine off) that ran entirely on McMaster timing belts. High torque can be achieved with belts.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

we were using KOP belts. kevlar gates timing belts.

as for belts, why use them if chain already works? its not broke, so don't fix it.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

Continuous improvement is one reason...

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

How easy or difficult something is to tension does not matter on how fast it stretches, but on the tensioning mechanism at hand. There are very easy ways to design belt tensioners, and very easy ways to design chain tensioners.

SDP/SI sells really nice polycarbonate timing belt sprockets with an aluminum hub. They weigh almost nothing.

We design our entire robot in CAD before any final parts are cut, fabricated or machined. Because of this, we design for exact belt and chain paths, and then add in options to tension the system. Belts are no more difficult to design for in this way than roller chain.

Last year (2009) we used the 5mm Gates timing belts on our robot. Never had any issues with them.

Belts are quieter than roller chain at high RPMs, and depending on the application, weigh a lot less.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

We used chain on our mecanum system because we were afraid what the humps would do to direct-drive transmissions this year and wanted to displace some of that abuse through chain, and we also chained the mecanum wheels to raised traction wheels for hump-transversal assist...

We had no problems at FLR, but at Championship managed to shear -- that's right, I said shear -- four master links. On four separate chains.

We think it was due to abuse on the Andymark pylons -- they were only aluminum, after all, and small deformations can pop things out of alignment. But shearing masterlinks, that was pretty impressive. We're not *sure* why, and the consistency of it happening on four separate chains is particularly confusing, but we're blaming aluminum abuse for now. (Perhaps a summer diagnostic project is in order.)

A few years ago we went direct-drive off of AM 12:1 planetaries, and it held up very well in a very abusive competition. We'll consider it again, I can assure you.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

We (Team 234) did a lot of work on this subject. You should check out our whitepaper. We set up a pretty good (in our opinion) Design of Experiments to test our hypothoses.

While you're correct, belts do require you to be more diligent in your design work, we found them to be slightly more efficient and lighter (using only manual tools) than an equivalent chain system.

We also did the "Put it against the wall and drive forward and see what gives first" test. The Roughtop-Plaction wheels slipped against the carpet before the belts slipped on the pulleys.

Re: Attempting the impossible
 

The amount of misinformation spread in this post is truly alarming. Belt would not be the cause of your drivetrain problems but rather improper use and design of the system. Kevlar/fiberglass timing belts can easily support more horsepower than a 25 chain system.
Yes, alignment is critical and spacing cannot be adjusted without a new belt but this is what design is for. Also in the short time of driving a robot, a properly rated timing belt should not show any noticeable stretch. They definitely stretch exponentially less than 25 chain. I don't think any team should rule out a method of power transfer just because they dont want to put in the effort to properly design and spec the proper components.

This year we had a 6 motor drivetrain geared at 9fps with 8 roughtop wheels. We used gates gt2 5mm pitch belt to connect all the wheels together and never once had a belt fail or even a belt that looked worn after 3 competitions. I will say that our set up wasn't even perfect and the belts still held up to the torque with no problem.

For teams that dont want to take the time to design everything in CAD before hand and design in tensioning devices, sure use 35 chain and take the enormous weight penalty. We will happily be saving 5-10lbs with our timing belt drivetrain