WCD-Belt Driven CAD practice

[DampRobot]

This looks like the start of a really great design! You've arrived at what many CDers would consider a "classic" WCD, albeit with a few small differences. I think you'll be very pleased with this design if you ever run it, especially with the WCP DSes.

Are you planning on doing exact C-C for the wheels? If so, definitely try it out first before you do it in the season. If it works, it works great, but if it doesn't it can really bite you in the behind. If you don't want to do exact C-C, add some sliding wheel trucks and you should be good to go.

You're going to want to offset two of your four wheel pulleys into the center. Otherwise, the second pulley in the DS won't have anywhere to go. Also, double check that the pulleys won't ratchet at the loads they'll be experiencing. Gates publishes some great tables that show the maximum torque at a given speed with a duty factor of 1 (if your duty factor is .8, it still should run fine for FRC purposes). Personally, I'd either bump your sprocket size up to 28T or run 15mm belts instead, but if the tables say it will work, it will work. Just make sure.

I actually really like those bumper mounts. I know 254 does them in a slightly different way, which is stronger, but you shouldn't have any problems with them. Of course, like Akash said, that's what testing is for.

I highly encourage you to build a drive like this in the offseason! It's a great experience, and is a good way to train kids too.

[Charles Boehm]

That looks a lot like what our team did this season!

Instead of using rivets for the gussets we used bolts so that we could remove the drive side completely to work on the gear boxes though.