Low Rider Club 2014

[Henrique Schmit]

We didn't suppose to have such a low robot, but for some time there was the head of a bolt scratching the ground, so we had to change the side of a spring washer so it didn't happen, that would make our robot 1mm away from the ground, or 0.0393701 inches.

[Botwoon]

Our robot scrapes the ground when it rides on carpet, do we win?

[Henrique Schmit]

Originally Posted by Botwoon

Our robot scrapes the ground when it rides on carpet, do we win?

I guess you can't get closer than that, there were a few parts of our robot scraping the ground, but we managed to fix those, so we're not so far away from you.

[jbsmithtx]

Originally Posted by BBray_T1296

On this year's robot, we had roughly 1/16" ground clearance.

Our ground clearance started just below 1/8", where the bottom of our lexan bellypan was. There were originally pan head bolts and rivets below the bellypan, but as the robot wore in (ie: was pounded in) we began to completely ruin the whole field of tape at Dallas (2 times) as our tubing frame slightly shifted. We moved all of the bolts and busted out the Dremel to ground down some bolt "tails" so the lowest point of the robot was the bellypan itself, which had sunk down to 1/16".

After 2 regionals, we have huge scratch marks (like sandpaper) all along our plastic bellypan where we were still slightly sliding around.

Ground clearance is defined in this club as the height of your bellypan (or similar large, horizontal plate) off of the ground. How low are you?

It would have been funny for you guys to play in our last qualification match at Dallas. Our mecanum wheels broke, and I bet a roller would have high-centered you guys

[Rynocorn]

Our robots belly pan was on the ground in the center during most of our matches and the bolts holding it one he front and bag dragged along the ground. We called it an "traction device" and not a cad error. At one point, some tape had overlapped on the field wand the carpet was a tad pulled up and I got the robot stuck on it for a bit.

[rkgoyankees]

Our gear covers are at best 1/8'' off the ground.

[BBray_T1296]

Originally Posted by TikiTech

We have upgraded to Colsons for the championships.. Hope they wear better.

We ran 3" diam, 1.5" wide Colson wheels (hence our low ground clearance) and replaced them for each regional, not because they wore, but because we swapped our whole drive-trains for unrelated reasons.

Anybody who saw us could attest that we were arguably the pushiest robot on the field, running 6CIM, 6w tank drive, with 2 speeds geared 5.5fps and 15.5 fps. We prided ourselves on bulldozing just about everybody down the field at both regionals.

The Colsons show some superficial wear on them. They felt a little softer after the regional than they were at the start, but they were neither (visual comparison) smaller than brand new wheels, nor did they push less hard.

Our team was extremely satisfied with the Colson wheel's performance, and we will definitely run them anytime we need traction in future games (who needs wheels in next year's water game )

[JCharlton]

We were in your club, but after our first match and some unfortunate skid marks in the carpet wherever we had travelled forced us to change out our 4-inch omnis for some 6-inch ones. That was a fun morning, let's not go in to it...

[Bryce Paputa]

We barely clear the ground, any extra clearance is a higher cog.

[TikiTech]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Pictures?

Here is the wear after our autonomous burnout at the field wall.



By the time the auto ended and teleop started the tire material had cooled and adhered to the carpet..

No teleop for our first practice match and some grumpy field techs..

We have upgraded to colsons now. I would like to try it again and compare wear though I doubt we would be popular after that.

I doubt we could of drove much after burning off that much material. We only have 1/16" of clearance..

Still looking for picture of carpet damage..

[Christopher149]

857 is something like 1/2". Makes our 2013 bot look absolutely silly with about 3.5" clearance, with then several more inches up to our electrical board.

[Whippet]

4301 had its belly pan dragging on the ground for an entire regional. When on a hard floor, there's barely enough clearance to slip a sheet of paper underneath.

[michael.saxon]

Originally Posted by Botwoon

Our robot scrapes the ground when it rides on carpet, do we win?

Pretty much. We were in a similar situation with the heads of rivets on the bottom of our belly pan. We had to put packing tape over them to keep them from ripping up the gaffer's tape

[nathannfm]

Some of you guys sure would have had a fun time at MAR CMP, the cement floor was so bad there were gaps where they couldn't get parts of the field to fit together right. Needless to say the carpet wasn't exactily flat and was the most torn up FRC carpet I have ever seen by the end of the day.