pic: FRC488 2014 Robot Rendering

[Madison]

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[Chris_Elston]

Madison - Nice robot from your team! Catcher part of your robot looks great along with the double floor pickup and of course what everyone else is focused on, shooting...

[ice.berg]

WOW

This is a design I totally did not consider. I really like the intake from both sides. For a short pass do you have to pop it out like a short shot or can you shove it out with your intake rollers for a rolling pass?
Great job on the CAD and overall design though, should be a fun robot to watch!

[1493kd]

Looks great... Almost the same as what we were thinking.

[Nemo]

Wow. Very impressive.

[wilsonmw04]

That looks familiar!

[rees2001]

4 pancake cylinders? Facing Down?

[Madison]

Thanks, everyone. It's only impressive if it actually works, though. The last of the parts we need were sent out to our amazing sponsor today, so we expect to have a completed robot by the end of the weekend. This past weekend, we were able to put the drive together and run it through some paces. We've also assembled and tested the final catapult linkage and the base assembly that rotates the collectors. So far, everything's looking good and coming together nicely.

The four pancake cylinders facing downward shift the octocanum drive modules onto traction wheels.

For a short pass, we'll have a 'soft eject' function that rolls the ball off the back of the catapult. We believe that'll be faster and more effective than trying to feed the ball back out of the collector. That's not in the model yet; we'll probably verify proof of concept tonight and it'll be in the model tomorrow.

This is definitely the most ambitious robot we've ever built. The support of a sheet metal shop has allowed us to design mechanisms in a way that we've never done before and really freed us from some of the constraints we've had in the past.

[techtiger1]

Madison,

Kudos on the very ambitious design. The render looks very nice. Are there additional centering devices or rollers to get the ball centered on the shooter ? Good luck.

[Kristian Calhoun]

Suddenly the Koons is 488.

Looking good!

[zsm150]

Is you shooter mounted sideways? Possibly for strafing side to side to avoid the goalie?

[chmconkling]

What CAD and rendering software did you use?

[Madison]

Originally Posted by techtiger1

Madison,

Kudos on the very ambitious design. The render looks very nice. Are there additional centering devices or rollers to get the ball centered on the shooter ? Good luck.

Based on our prototypes -- this just works. The ball is captured on the inside of the collector by gravity and drops into the catapult when we raise the collector up.

Originally Posted by zsm150

Is you shooter mounted sideways? Possibly for strafing side to side to avoid the goalie?

Yes, the catapult is mounted 90* from our drive's forward/backward orientation. Since it's an octocanum drive, we can reorient it very quickly and should be able to score as effectively as any other team.

Originally Posted by chmconkling

What CAD and rendering software did you use?

Solidworks with its included PhotoView 360 tool used for the rendering.

[zsm150]

Originally Posted by Madison

Yes, the catapult is mounted 90* from our drive's forward/backward orientation. Since it's an octocanum drive, we can reorient it very quickly and should be able to score as effectively as any other team

Are you worried about weight with an octocanum? Our team tried it a few years back and it was insanely heavy and complicated

[Electronica1]

Originally Posted by zsm150

Are you worried about weight with an octocanum? Our team tried it a few years back and it was insanely heavy and complicated

After a decent amount of designing, octocanum can be somewhat light, our my teams octocanum is around 28 lbs (this includes frame, wheels, pistons, modules, gearboxes, and cims). I think 488's octocanum should be a bit lighter than that because they are using custom one stage gearboxes, plastic 4 inch mecanum wheels, and their metal for their modules are a bit thinner than ours so I can see this being around 25 lbs.