Your Versachassis??

Originally Posted by Ronnie314

We purchased the 1/4" rivet gun from harbor freight...think that has enough power to pull rivets for a chassis?

Definitely.

[RonnieS]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

Definitely.

Alright we have always used 1/4" bolts and never have used rivets on a drive train so you could say we are "nervous" aha.

Originally Posted by Ronnie314

Alright we have always used 1/4" bolts and never have used rivets on a drive train so you could say we are "nervous" aha.

We just used rivets for the first time on our offseason bot and absolutely loved them. They're essentially weightless, extremely strong given a tight and concentric hole, and simple to use. 10/10 would rivet again.

[RonnieS]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

We just used rivets for the first time on our offseason bot and absolutely loved them. They're essentially weightless, extremely strong given a tight and concentric hole, and simple to use. 10/10 would rivet again.

Do you happen to know when the VersaChassis user Manuel will be released? and we are realy questioning using the Versa stuff because of the shipping date not being till the 15th on a lot of the things we would need. Have you looked into that?

[MichaelBick]

1/4 rivets are overkill so I wouldn't be worried. All of our frame was connected with 3/16" rivets last year(no welding, no bolts). Even 1/4-20 bolts are overkill. We switched to 10-32 for everything last year which can save you a bit of weight.

Originally Posted by Ronnie314

Do you happen to know when the VersaChassis user Manuel will be released? and we are really questioning using the Versa stuff because of the shipping date not being till the 15th on a lot of the things we would need. Have you looked into that?

I honestly don't have a problem with the parts not shipping until the 15th. It gives me time to design my robot in CAD for the game, and since all of the parts for the VersaChassis are available for CAD on the WCP/VEXpro websites I can easily design my drivetrain in an hour at most, and move on knowing I can change my drive at any time because the VersaChassis product line is so interchangeable. So if kickoff is January 4th, that gives me a week and a half to design most of my robot in CAD, I order my parts when I know what I want, then they ship on the 15th, which is a Wednesday, so that I know when they arrive at or before Saturday I have a simple and functional drivetrain model to work off of, and in a matter of hours I'll have a functional drivetrain we can use at the end of week 2.

I'm not sure when the manual will be released, but I'd argue it's coming up within the next week if not sooner.

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by Ronnie314

Do you happen to know when the VersaChassis user Manuel will be released? and we are realy questioning using the Versa stuff because of the shipping date not being till the 15th on a lot of the things we would need. Have you looked into that?

I wouldn't worry too much. I think a lot of that is VP wanting to be really happy with their quality before they ship their product, and wanting to be able to say that if they said the 15th, it will ship by the 15th.

Knowing the people who worked on this, I'd bet that almost all of those parts should be ready by (or before) kickoff, but they want to make extra- extra-sure that all their products are really high quality by the date they said they would ship them by. In any case, like Andrew said, the 15th is right around when most people will start to want those parts anyway.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Ronnie314

Alright we have always used 1/4" bolts and never have used rivets on a drive train so you could say we are "nervous" aha.

Rivets are good. We've used 1/4 rivets which integrate nicely when we use the kitbot chassis. They are overkill for most applications but on the kitbot they are great. 3/16 is perfect for pretty much all FRC applications.

I would recommend that in some applications to think twice about using rivets. We have all too often riveted pieces together only to be stuck having to drill them out when something needs to be changed or taken off the robot. Using nuts and bolts to assemble your robot then replace them with rivets is a great idea when you find yourself designing on the fly. Nuts and bolts are also great when making mechanisms modular or to swap replacement parts easily. We designed our shooter plate this year that with four bolts we could drop our shooter motors and wheels out of our robot for repair or replacement.

Technically you can drill out a rivet faster than taking off a nut or bolt but dealing with metal shavings flying around your robot isn't always the best idea when electronics are involved.