pic: FRC488 2014 Frame

[Madison]

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[techtiger1]

Madison,

That looks awesome. We toyed around with a similar shaped frame early in the season but went with something more conventional. Is this shape for better maneuverability to get the ball in traffic? Or because it looks cool or both?

[Bob Steele]

WOW what an amazing frame!!
We look forward to sharing the field with you!!

We are cutting/bending/riveting this weekend...

[Madison]

We went with an irregular octagon because it gives us more real estate on the machine for mechanisms and for ball storage. This frame is 32" wide and 29" long -- much nicer than a 28" square.

The 32" width gives us some additional flexibility with respect to ball collection and we hope that'll translate to lower acquisition time on the field. That was the big driving factor behind using the octagon, but the added space for mechanisms and control system components is a really nice bonus.

-Madison

[mwmac]

Great looking frame! Look forward to seeing a pic with the drive units fitted...

[Bryce2471]

It looks very cool. I love the idea of an octagonal octocanum.
Look forward to seeing it at the Portland champs.
I'll be welding and assembling our final drive chassis this weekend as well...

[AllenGregoryIV]

Madison, this looks great. We're doing Octocanum for the first time this year, seems to be a popular choice by a lot of teams.

I can't wait to see the final version of this. I like the little details like the holes in the corners for inserting the shafts and the slots for a battery strap.

[Madison]

Our Vex mecanum wheels are back-ordered, so we have to wait a bit before we can assemble the wheel modules fully. I also screwed up and ordered the wrong belts, so there's that, too.

The thing I like most about the design is that the modules are fully contained and they pivot around shoulder bolts screwed into a standoff that's captured inside the module. We don't have to worry about spacers or anything when adding or removing a module.

We're going with four independent cylinders for actuation this year -- it works better with the rest of the robot. The mounting for those cylinders is going to be tightly integrated with some other parts of the robot, so they'll also come along a little bit later.

[Darren Collins]

This is beautiful! I'm very eager to see this in action.

[Nemo]

This looks great. Even though I am a big proponent of kit frames for saving time, I like the choice of a custom frame for the purposes of effectively increasing the robot's size, particularly in the width direction. I think it's a very smart choice. If your team is able to make good use of that extra width with your manipulator, that could give you a nice advantage. And I like octocanum for this game for lining up to a ball and potentially catching. Seems like some great design choices combined with reaping the rewards of work done on previous relevant designs. Thanks for sharing the picture.