Kitbots after Week 1

[jeremylee]

Originally Posted by KCmoon

From our team the only problem we had was that the wheels chipped. We will probably have to replace most of them as the treads were wearing very hard and our traction is probably different because of it.

Ours have some chipped lugs also, though it hasn't seemed to affect traction much. We have 3 days of practice before we bagged and a regional under our belt now. Looks like we could go another regional if we wanted to on the same set even though we may replace them. I think you could run the lugs flat if you wanted and keep going (basically be similar to a stealth wheel).

[Tim Lehmann4967]

We cut our AM14U into a square instead of long or wide. So far it has held up very well(knock on wood) and we have very minimal reinforcements. My only complaint is that the ToughBox Minis can't take three CIMs

[Ian Curtis]

We have yet to compete, but with our fully loaded robot (110-120 lbs with bumpers & batteries) we get some bouncing on very tight radius turns with the 1/2 wide 1/2 long square AM14U configuration. Not a big problem, but a minor annoyance. I suspect the critical point is somewhere north of 100 pounds, as we never noticed it until after the bumpers went on.

[hrench]

My team 1108 used the kit frame to win the Crossroads regional. We have stock wheels and stock gear-boxes but with up-ratio gears. We're about 28" square.

We've seen extensive wear on the wheel treads, but they don't seem to grip all that much less. Weighing 95 lbs, we're still able to push most robots, especially sideways. Across the front, we have an exposed section of the extrusion where we took a significant hit and bent it in about two inches. We bashed it back out and bolted a piece of steel bar-stock below the angle and it was okay through the finals.

With a slightly light robot, four CIMS and up-ratio gears, we've measured 110 lbs of pulling force and about 12 ft/sec. Great acceleration too. I think these numbers make you competitive in most arenas. We'll see how that works out for the Championships.

I think its' easier to build a robot on than the c-frame was, but on the downside, it takes away one more area to be creative from the kids. But we're a small team and saving the resources for the rest of the design was beneficial to us. It's also a change mounting bumpers to.