[Joe Johnson]

In 6 years of building FIRST robots, there has yet to be a keyway on any of our robot.

I know that a lot of teams use them successfully, but for the most part, I try to avoid them.

We have used a pin joint several times but most of the time we have done this, we regret it before the Nationals are over.

Our basic rule is that if we are not going to take it apart, we weld it. If we need to take it apart, Trantorques are our first choice.

For my money, a trantoque is pretty hard to beat.

A 12mm trantorque can handle the toque of the drills, even in low.

Joe J.

P.S. a compromise between welding and removability is to weld a flange onto a shaft that we can then bolt various sprockets to. This lets us tune in our ratio without having to deal with keyways, etc. JJ