pic: Team 610 - 2013 Electronics Board

[jamierose]

Originally Posted by Tmaxxrox97

Is there a CAD file of this drivetrain available? The floating encoders and mounts sound like a really cool idea and I would like to take a look at them if I could.

We will probably upload our CAD to www.frc-designs.com at some point in the future. I would do it now, but unfortunately, I, and many other members of our team, are currently writing exams, so we don't have much time to sort out our CAD and upload it. I'll explain a bit about how our encoders are mounted.

As you can see in the picture, our CIMs are pretty close together. We made a small plastic piece with our 3-axis CNC router that looks like a rectangle with a semi-circle cut out on either side of it. These portions of a circle are made to fit perfectly around a CIM. There was a hole in the middle of the piece for an encoder to fit through so we could screw it on. We then slid the piece in between the CIMs. The friction was enough to keep the plastic piece in place.

We then used our usual method to connect the encoder to the shaft. On 610 we use a technique we borrowed from 188, which is using surgical tubing to connect an encoder to a shaft. We simply slide the encoder into one end of the surgical tubing and the shaft into the other end. It works extremely well and we have never had issues with it.

If you have any more questions feel free to ask or message me! Hopefully we'll be able to get that CAD uploaded soon.