95 Hard at work

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by Answer42

First of all, gorgeous and highly effective looking robot you have there. I have no doubt this will be a great season for you. And pneumatic brakes will definitely be an advantage to shooting this year. But, on the same subject even if your robot is not entirely off the ground, the pads will still be making solid contact with the ground. Meaning that when someone hits you with your brakes down, the robot will attempt to go in that direction and your main resisting force will be the rigidity of the (what looks like) 1/4 inch steel shaft. Even a quarter inch of movement of the whole robot would be devastating to the straightness of that shaft, particularly if the brake pads digs into the carpet and starts to twist from the horizontal. I would recommend some form of linear bearings to prevent this from happening. However to be clear, I'm no expert and this is just my 2 cents based on what I've seen from using brakes on robots.

We are a little nervous about this too. We plan on thoroughly testing the brakes to ensure that they will be durable enough to survive competition.

A quick analysis suggests that we have a moderate margin of safety if all 4 brakes somewhat evenly distribute the braking loads, but we don't know if the system will behave that nicely...

The (more complicated) contingency plan is to hinge brake mechanisms from the chassis side plate or the belly pan.