pic: FRC488 First Sheet Metal Drive

[Madison]

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[Akash Rastogi]

What gauge sheet is that? Looks slightly thinner than .090" to me. Is that a custom shifter or SS internals?

Looks great as usual, and super light!

[Madison]

I believe it's .090, but I am not certain. Those are regular super shifters with the black housing replaced by spacers; they're just bolted onto the side rails.

It's 34 lbs., but there are lots of places to take out some more weight. A lot of the webbing is thicker than it needs to be, but those are lessons that can come later. I was excited to see that all of the parts fit together in the first place. He did a MUCH better job with this than I did the first time I had to design a drive.

[JVN]

Looks very good!
You should look into getting rivets with the correct grip range, the ones you're using appear to be a biiiiit too long.

-John

[protoserge]

Very cool!

What is the spacing you chose for the standard mounting holes?

Have you considered using 0.063" if you have access to it?

[JamesCH95]

Looks great.

[Rahul Bhardwaj]

Originally Posted by Madison

I believe it's .090, but I am not certain. Those are regular super shifters with the black housing replaced by spacers; they're just bolted onto the side rails.

It's 34 lbs., but there are lots of places to take out some more weight. A lot of the webbing is thicker than it needs to be, but those are lessons that can come later. I was excited to see that all of the parts fit together in the first place. He did a MUCH better job with this than I did the first time I had to design a drive.

THANKS! It's actually .0625'' aluminum The grip range is off by quite a bit since someone at our hardware store grabbed from the wrong bin (to be fair the one we ordered was longer than we needed anyway) but we decided to just go with it.

[akoscielski3]

Definitely would be a good idea to make the spacing between the cut outs smaller, for reference I usually do 0.75" spacing, but now for parts of the plate that have nothing mounted on it I am most likely going to do 0.5".

I'm not sure why, but I always seem to make the chassis plates higher than the wheels, just to enclose them, I kinda like that it wasn't done here, a lot of weight was saved there, maybe I will do the same next time.

This also looks like a smaller wheel, I think 6" (if those are 8inch wheels that I'm looking at) could also work on this chassis. Not sure If that was planned for them to be interchangeable? But If it is interchangeable (even if it wasn't designed to), and you seem to have a hard time turning sometimes, you could increase the torque by putting smaller wheels on there.

Oh MY! Is that a designed battery box I see there!! WOW! Thats Luxury right there... Prop's to the student for remembering to design that in. After designing our whole robot myself this year, and the off season chassis, that's the thing I forgot Both times...

Over All Great chassis, hope that students knows how well of a job he/she did

[Andrew Remmers]

Just wanted to say this drive train looks fantastic, and has inspired me to finally start work on another concept of mine!

Thanks!

- Andrew

[IKE]

In my opinion, the most important part of the original post is this,

"We've been working with a new sponsor over the summer that brings sheet metal fabrication resources to our team."- Madison

This is a prime example of how to build team strength.

New Sponsor
working over the summer
new resource to the team

They may or may not be asking for money of the sponsor, but instead they have found something that might be more important. During the summer, they are working out the file transfer and formatting. They are getting a feel for the quality of work the suppplier can offer. They are also working on building a new line of communication. Many of us wait until the stresses of build season to try this out. It is easy then to allow those stresses to turn into pointing fingers rather than working through communication or timing issues.

Bravo 488 on a great project. Most of us could replace "sheet metal" with plastic molding, or shaft turning, or CNC bracket or ...

[akoscielski3]

Originally Posted by Joyride_67_1902

Just wanted to say this drive train looks fantastic, and has inspired me to finally start work on another concept of mine!

Thanks!

- Andrew

Oh god. You DON'T Need to design ANOTHER Chassis.

[Bob Steele]

Great work Madison!!
Are you able to bend the aluminum or are you attaching the flat pieces using angle between them?

Our chassis is built very similarly utilizing angle aluminum and a jig one of our mentors came up with to hold the pieces rigidly at 90 degrees...pretty slick

congrats to the designer and fabricators!!

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

Great work Madison!!
Are you able to bend the aluminum or are you attaching the flat pieces using angle between them?

Our chassis is built very similarly utilizing angle aluminum and a jig one of our mentors came up with to hold the pieces rigidly at 90 degrees...pretty slick

congrats to the designer and fabricators!!

The parts are were all bent on CNC breaks at the sponsor's shop. When the parts come in, we just rivet it together and it's good to go.

[Nick Lawrence]

This is gorgeous. Can I have one?

Congrats on the new connections and having the opportunity to "work out the bugs" before you put one of these bad boys on the field.

Definitely looking forward to see what comes of this in a few months.

-Nick