What is best for a tall conveyer belt?

[Andrew5191]

My team may be using a very tall conveyer belt and planning on making it the maximum height. Is using a square base and putting lots of weight at the back, or making a rectangular long base and putting some weight at the back in order to keep it from tipping better? We plan on picking up as much totes that is possible, so the front will be very heavy and will tip without counter weights so wondering what is best shape for the bot.

[John Retkowski]

Some things you'll want to take into consideration are:

What orientation you want to pick up the totes in. I'm assuming long ways/vertically, but if you also want to pick it up wide/horizontally you'll have to account for that and probably won't be able to pursue a long base.

Where the majority of your necessary weight is. Things like electrical systems, motors, and the battery should be weighed and balanced against the conveyor (with and without the additional weight ranges of totes.)

Something you also may want to consider is an extending device going away from the pickup/conveyor side to provide extra weight after the totes are picked up. At a meeting one of our mentors talked about using a pnuematic cylinder in a previous year to extend the battery to a different point within the frame to provide better counterweight.

In conclusion I think It's entirely possible and feasible to go with a square frame as long as everything is correctly balanced.

[BigJack]

Don't forget that, since you don't have any kind of restriction on protrusions this year, you could always extend some kind of outrigger or support in front of the robot to counteract the effects from the totes, too.