Quote:
Originally Posted by jbsmithtx
This is Team 4206's preseason drive module (or at least part of it). The rest of the model is a little messy right now. Any comments, thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated... The large arms on the side will be actuated by a pneumatic piston
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Hi jbsmithtx,
We're working on a similar design using VEX 4" Mecanums. We built a prototype to test performance of wheels, motor controller, and gearmotor/encoder combination. We used the Matrix system for cost and availability reasons; the Matrix gearmotor has the encoder built in and the Matrix controller handles up to 4 motors. We really like the VEX Mecanum wheels; they roll smoothly and the price is very reasonable.
Our competition design is currently:
For the testing prototype we built:
We want to fold the motor tighter to the side using a miter gearbox; at least on the front. This will provide more room for the collection mechanism.
Things we like about the prototype:
- Motor controller built in PID speed control worked well (RobotC code)
- Teleop control is very nice for omni-directional control
- Speed vs. power is good (quantitative date to come)
- Fabrication was fairly straight forward (see cons)
- Square shaft for wheel eliminates hub
Cons:
- Couldn't get encoder position control to work with the built in Matrix RobotC code
- Square shaft VEX to 4mm motor shaft coupling was tricky. We had to learn how to broach a square hole and weld 2 pieces of the coupler together.
