pic: Octocanum Concept V2

[Nathan Streeter]

Looks much improved! It looks like the pod would be plenty robust (perhaps a little beefier-than-needed even), but I usually prefer to air on the side of over-engineered in the first iteration of a design.

Regarding the pod actuation, I would recommend - if possible - actuating it in such a way that you get a mechanical advantage rather than a disadvantage. In this case (with the moment arm from piston-to-rotation being shorter than the moment arm of actuating-wheel-to-rotation), you'll need the piston to push with more force than 25-50% of the robot's weight. Mounting the piston somewhat-vertically over the last standoff on the module would achieve a mechanical advantage, but frame integration is really only worse with that...

Does anyone on here have experience with cantilevered butterfly/octocanum? We've never tried cantilevering the axles on our butterfly (although we did consider it for maintenance reasons), but it might be reasonable... If you do it, I'd definitely recommend working hard to minimize the distance from your wheels to the main frame piece, and to make your frame as wide a box as is reasonable. The loading for a cantilevered octocanum/butterfly is a lot more intense than the typical WCD; you have the typical driving torque and weighted bending, but also the forces applied by the actuated wheel the piston when in traction mode are going to be powerful torques. Our shafts were simply-supported 1/2" tube shafts... I liked them alot, but we built it around a fully-enclosed sheet metal 'tube' that also housed the actuation pistons. They didn't need to transmit torque because we had the CIMs mesh directly to a gear on the first wheel.

[Kevin Leonard]

In the same vein as what Ty and Nathan suggested, you don't need that much clearance between your retracted traction wheel and the ground, and you could use a lot more mechanical advantage to make actuation easier, so what if you mounted a shorter piston right above the traction wheel. This increases the lever arm and decreases the throw for both faster actuation and more mechanical advantage.

Play around with different setups like that and see what seems to be the best setup you can in that configuration.

As far as being cantilevered octocanum modules go, I feel like it should be fine, as long as it's well-put together, and so is the rest of the robot (including bumpers). But I have no experience with it.

[Scott Kozutsky]

The traction wheel does not need to lift up that far. If you flip the traction and mecanum wheels around you could easily get away with a .25in liftoff distance (also, as previously stated, you get a longer wheelbase when you need it most). It will probably also be easier to pull the end of the traction wheel down instead of the module horizontally. You're also likely on the traction wheel for a very short time so you could easily get away with a much smaller wheel (like 2.5 inches or less in diameter). That versablock is also getting cantilevered pretty far, I'd watch out for that. Hex bearings are infamous for breaking under those kinds of conditions (but have also been improved since I last heard that was a problem).

[Electronica1]

You should be good with having two different size wheels in contact with the ground since you are using belt which should be able to handle it. As others have said, you don't need to lift the traction wheel up that far.

Also, have you thought about integrating the gearbox into the module? (see 488, 148, and 2826)

Have you had experience with 16 ft/s with mecanum? My team usually sticks around 14 ft/s with mecanum since it still gives you the power you need to strafe (mostly).

[Chak]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

Does anyone on here have experience with cantilevered butterfly/octocanum?

We did cantilevered octocanum for our 2015 robot, in a similar setup to what is in this thread. We ended up popping the inner race on quite a few of those old Andymark bearings, so we switched to their new HD bearings. After that it worked fine through 2 regionals.
This is just anecdotal evidence though.

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

Does anyone on here have experience with cantilevered butterfly/octocanum?

We ran a cantilevered butterfly/nonadrive variant in 2014. Worked without issue throughout 8 different competitions, including as and against some of the heaviest defense at Championships and IRI.