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Unread 07-08-2013, 12:25
BrendanB BrendanB is offline
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Re: Drive Train Choices

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence View Post
When your drivetrain itself has single-handedly won a regional, you have permission to say you've mastered it.

Nobody has "mastered" any sort of drivetrain. Prime example: Team 254, who has their drivetrain down to a science, and have been iterating new and better versions of it for almost a decade, still has not "mastered" the 6wd. Their's is very good, if not one of the best I've seen, but they are always iterating and improving it year after year.

tl;dr: Build a 4/6/8 wd that outperforms 254, and then you can say you've mastered it and move on.
I believe what he means by "master" is that they have reached a comfort zone and would like to try something new. This is where we fall into. We have used three 6wd robots over our competition seasons and would like to try something else we could potentially use if the game challenge and our strategy would be better served with omini directional movement. We are still going to iterate custom 6-8+wd this fall using new build techniques and maybe try belts/gear or WCD style depending on what the team views as top criteria for what we want to get out of our drivebase.

As for what you should make, it really comes down to what you want to get out of it, and how much do you want to invest in the project. Mecanums are a quick and inexpensive way to play around with multi-directional drive. They do have their drawbacks in competition but all you need is the wheels and two years worth of KOP components to get yourself rolling. Swerve/octocanum/butterfly will take a considerable amount of time, design, machining, and will be more expensive to make depending on what you have lying around your shop.

Right now it seems like you have a very broad idea of what kind of a project you want to do based on your only criteria being "any kind but the standard FIRST KOP wheels". A lot of teams do this by saying, "We want to make a West Coast Drive (or swerve) because all the good robots use them" without setting priorities of what is more important for their team. Pick what most matters to your team in terms of (weight, maneuverability, reliability, simplicity, size, ease of maintenance, manufacturing time, looks, special features, # of parts, ability to climb obstacles, etc.)
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1519 Mechanical M.A.Y.H.E.M. 2008 - 2010
3467 Windham Windup 2011 - 2015
1058 PVC Pirates 2016 - xxxx