Swerve drive

[Giffgiff27]

Team 234 has a very effective swerve drive this year. Although we're fairly new at having one, "only our 2nd year doing it", we've produced a very efficient drive system. Stop by our pit at worlds and we'll be glad to show you how we came up with it!

[s1900ahon]

2468 has never used swerve before this year. It was one of our banned words not to be uttered in the shop, simply because it was not a solution we had any off-season experience with.

However, this year, due to the availability of a COTS solution and student demand, we opted to permit the use of the AM swerve modules. If I recall correctly, the current iteration of a corner is: am-3009 (CIM replaced with a mini CIM) + 3D-printed position-sensing gear + MA3-A10-250-N encoder + Talon SRX with analog breakout board for steering + Victor SP for drive. We program in LabVIEW.

Feel free to swing by our pit and ask our students of their experiences with these modules (driving them, integrating them, and programming them).

Kudos and our thanks to the Bomb Squad for helping us with the swerve control software.

We are toying with the idea of doing an off season project to design, manufacture, and test our own swerve module.

Swing by team 1323's pit this year for the most compact and lightweight swerve yet.

[jwfoss]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

Swing by team 1323's pit this year for the most compact and lightweight swerve yet.

Perhaps you can back up this claim, I'd love to you see put together an article for beyondinspection about it.

Other teams to look at for swerve at Worlds: 16, 696, 1717

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

Swing by team 1323's pit this year for the most compact and lightweight swerve yet.

Turn it down a little bit.

[Scott Kozutsky]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

Swing by team 1323's pit this year for the most compact and lightweight swerve yet.

I'd like to see pictures, CAD and a scale to back this up. I'm going to guess that 1717 is single speed this year and managed to save some weight out of their already 1st tier swerve.

I hope frc 2451 has one of their swerve modules from last year in the pit.

[bkahl]

195 took the AM Swerve (am-3009) and made some simple mods to put it "on steroids".

It for sure isn't the lightest, fastest, or best module out there, but we're pleased with how it came out and how easy it was to integrate.

Feel free to stop by our pit at Worlds to see it and ask questions. We will have a spare module to handle.

[marshall]

We've had a lot of luck with 221's Revolution Pro modules. They are awesome:

http://www.team221.com/viewproduct.php?id=147

It would be nice if we could get a different wheel on there and I suspect custom wheels might become an off-season project for us. Great setup though.

[Brandon_L]

See if you can stop by 1640's pit, they're always more then happy to talk about their swerves. They've been using them for years now and gone through a million iterations. It's really neat stuff.

Edit: by years, I mean somewhere around 6-8 seasons

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

See if you can stop by 1640's pit, they're always more then happy to talk about their swerves. They've been using them for years now and gone through a million iterations. It's really neat stuff.

Edit: by years, I mean somewhere around 6-8 seasons

Since 2010. Drop by anytime! We're also open source on the website.

[themccannman]

1640 has an entire wiki dedicated to the development of their swerve modules: http://wiki.team1640.com/index.php?title=Swerve_Central

Start designing yours now so that you have a good list of questions to ask teams when you get to CMP. Write down a list of questions. The first teams that come to mind when people think of good swerves are 16, 973, 1323, 1640, 368, 1717(possibly the best there is), and 118. These teams have all developed a good swerve drive in the past or currently use one that's been in production for several years.

Also, make sure to have some programming questions ready when you get there because that's one of the most challenging parts.

[pmangels17]

Originally Posted by themccannman

1640 has an entire wiki dedicated to the development of their swerve modules: http://wiki.team1640.com/index.php?title=Swerve_Central

Start designing yours now so that you have a good list of questions to ask teams when you get to CMP. Write down a list of questions. The first teams that come to mind when people think of good swerves are 973, 1323, 1640, 368, 1717(possibly the best there is), and 118. These teams have all developed a good swerve drive in the past or currently use one that's been in production for several years.

Also, make sure to have some programming questions ready when you get there because that's one of the most challenging parts.

Follow up:

Don't forget 16, their swerve is as good or better than most of the ones you've mentioned. Also, check out 1640 and ask them about some of their more recent control software updates from the past season or two, the way they drive is really awesome. And for a first-iteration swerve drive, 696 seemed to have a really good handle on the process; their system is very cool. 3360 has a two-speed swerve, which is way awesome as well.

[Coach Norm]

Originally Posted by bkahl

195 took the AM Swerve (am-3009) and made some simple mods to put it "on steroids".

It for sure isn't the lightest, fastest, or best module out there, but we're pleased with how it came out and how easy it was to integrate.

Feel free to stop by our pit at Worlds to see it and ask questions. We will have a spare module to handle.

We used the AM Swerve as well. Can you share a few of the mods you made to the AM Swerve? We made a few as well.

Dremeled out the slot of the spur gear for a 2mm key that interfaces with the CIM motor shaft. We then put a 2mm key in the slot with the shaft collar around it. This required taking each module completely apart.

We 3D printed a gear that is one to one in size to the directional gear and then attached an MA3 encoder from US Digital to the gear for programming of direction and getting an absolute zero for direction. I cannot explain much in terms of electronics or programming but we will have our programmers in the pit as well as helping Greg McKaskle from NI on a LabView presentation at Champs.

[kitare102]

Originally Posted by bkahl

195 took the AM Swerve (am-3009) and made some simple mods to put it "on steroids".

It for sure isn't the lightest, fastest, or best module out there, but we're pleased with how it came out and how easy it was to integrate.

Feel free to stop by our pit at Worlds to see it and ask questions. We will have a spare module to handle.

What mods did you add to make the swerve and steer better? It's a possibility for our off-season project and we could probably get some good experience modifying a premade unit.

[chrisfl]

How much weight do your swerve modules come out to be? I am working on one during the off season and want to make it as light and compact as possible.