Rhino track failier?

[Brian C]

Originally Posted by aJASONt_angles

Hey All,

My name is Jason and I'm an AndyMark Intern this year and mentor on Team 4272. I've been doing testing on the Rhino Track drive pulleys and their durability.

We put on all new pulleys and bearings on our test mule after discovering the previous ones were broken. We tightened the track belt on one side as much as we were comfortable with and left the other side a bit looser. The pulleys were assembled with 3 washers under each screw to mimic the thread engagement of the new mold.

Here are the tests we performed in the order we performed them. In between tests we drove the track drive around on carpet and concrete. The test mule was weighted down to 120 lbs.

30 Rockwall crossings, full speed on concrete.
30 Rockwall crossings with fully tightened front bolts, full speed on concrete.
Dropped from 2.5 feet onto concrete.
10 Rockwall crossings, full speed on concrete.
Hammer to the side of front bolt 3 times each side.
Dropped from 2.5 feet onto concrete twice.
Ran into metal bar full speed five times.
5 axial hits with weighted cart.
5 front end drops from 2.5 feet.
Crashing into various things in the warehouse.

Throughout the testing we stopped between tests to look at the pulleys. The pulleys showed no signs of fracture externally on either side of the track drive.

Here is a video of our axial hit with the weighted cart.

More testing is being done today and I will update those of you on Chief Delphi as soon as I have more results.

- Jason

Jason,

Thanks for the updated information. From your description it sounds as if you folks are driving your test mule much like our team drivers.

Of course we encourage them to "Drive it like you stole it" and that a robot can always be repaired BUT a match cannot be replayed.

From the looks of some of the frame parts in the video you guys have taken the "crashing into various things" portion to heart!