Drive Base Help

[OccamzRazor]

Originally Posted by ctt956

I've driven a basic robot with six 6" pnuematic wheels over wooden defenses. It was built on an AndyMark frame from 2012. For motors and gearboxes, it had two CIMs and a ToughBox Mini on each side. There were no bumpers, but it had no problem crossing defenses, even the rock wall. However, I don't think that frame would fit eight 8" wheels; there wasn't a lot of free space between the 6", so I think six 8" would be a very tight fit, if they fit at all. I haven't seen the AM chassis this year though, so it might be different.

It was an AM2014 chassis that you drove at the Zone but you bring up a good point. The old AM2012/2013 C-Channel chassis is very easily adapted for 8wd as we did do in 2012. (we later converted it to 6wd because of balancing issues)

This one is the AM2013 version which I believe had the new and improved corner brackets that made the chassis really rigid:
http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-2494.htm

The newer sheet metal chassis can be modified for 8wd but you need to be really careful of where you put the support structure in between the sheet metal plates to prevent it from falling apart. Our 2014 robot had issues because the supports were not easily placed or modified on the AM2014 for what wanted in our chassis but we made it work.