Quote:
Originally Posted by pmangels17
Also, if your team has limited funds, try a Kitbot on Steroids from Team 1114, Simbotics, as it is a great, rock solid drivetrain that works.
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Simbotics isn't a Hall of Fame team for nothing. The resources they make available to the FIRST community are extremely useful for inexperienced (and some experienced) teams.
Quote:
Originally Posted by brennonbrimhall
Specifically, consider adding redundancy to the robot. Try to avoid designing in possible failures that would affect multiple subsystems on the robot. From a reliability standpoint, consider west coast drive.
Team 20 chose a six-wheel, dropped center west coast drive this year, saving us in WPI, during Finals 3. In our case, it let us continue to drive – absolutely necessary for our floor pickup and shooter. This design choice helped us to remain operable, though not at our best.
After seeing Einstein, I am definitely willing to put a zip tie around the Anderson connectors to the PD Board and the battery...
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Now while West Coast Drive is great, and it worked extremely well for our team this year, it's not always the most viable option, especially for teams inexperienced with WCD and drive trains in general.
In considering different drive trains- build some in the offseason, see which are the easiest to build, design, program, tune, and test. Compare their weights and attributes. I've seen far too many teams use Mecanum this year that had no good reason for doing so other than they thought it was cool.
As for building a sturdy robot, my recommendation is to keep your main systems lightweight, then add reinforcement. If you look at Team 20's robot this year, everything is reinforced with brackets and C-Channel. to prevent damage.
We only broke twice during the season. Once during WPI finals, when our drive train's chain broke (as Brennon said above, we could still drive and score), and once at CMP when the cylinder that raised and lowered our shooter tray bent after a big collision with Team 4265 (Awesome team, btw. One of the best robots in Archimedes- and they were a 2nd year team!).
In both instances, we could still drive, score points, and collect, just not quite as well.
Robustness and reliability are just as (if not more) important than the amount of points you put up. If you're the best robot Day 1 of competition: That's great!
But you need to be able to repeat your performance Day 2- especially since the Defense gets even tougher.
Good luck with your season!