Robot Battery Placement

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Ekcrbe

They shouldn't be able to. Keep all your battery terminals covered, all the time. Electrical tape is the natural choice to put over the ring terminals and bolts on the battery leads. If you get new batteries and aren't able to put leads on them right away, cover the terminals with tape or caps. It's a really small amount of effort to do, and there's just no sense in taking the risk of shorting a battery on anything.

If you have the terminals somewhere they could run into something outside the robot, most plastic coverings won't save you. For instance, imagine a battery horizontal underneath a robot last year with the terminals down instead of up. Electrical tape isn't going to stay an insulator long in those conditions. It's only protection against momentary incidental contact, not violent contact or repeated rubbing.

[Tungrus]

I am not sure how many teams charge their batteries on the robot, we never did. We chose to replace battery for every match, so ease of replacing was on top of the priority list. We used electrical tape over the heat shrink rap on terminals as cushion (after our run into mysterious issue), so terminals were protected. Electrical tape doesn't have to come out or get loose to cause problems. When battery jumps as a result of robot bumps, if terminals hits metal tubing electrical tape gets hairline cut, it's hard to notice, which may cause short during next bump.

[Ekcrbe]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

If you have the terminals somewhere they could run into something outside the robot, most plastic coverings won't save you. For instance, imagine a battery horizontal underneath a robot last year with the terminals down instead of up. Electrical tape isn't going to stay an insulator long in those conditions. It's only protection against momentary incidental contact, not violent contact or repeated rubbing.

Well sure. You shouldn't design your robot in a way that allows the battery to be subjected to repeated hard impacts, but you also shouldn't leave the terminals exposed in case something ever happens. I think Tungrus meant that the battery would shift within the robot, not come into contact with the outside world. But think, for instance, of a piece of your robot breaking off and landing inside the chassis. It shouldn't short the battery if the two come into momentary contact. Likewise around the shop. Don't handle batteries in an aggressive or unsafe way, but I'd rather have some insulation on the terminals than none.

[GeeTwo]

We mounted our battery vertical our first four years, and last year we used the AM battery mounting kit for the kit chassis, which mounts the battery horizontally. It was in there quite securely (better than most of our home brew solutions), and only required pulling a single bungee off to remove it from the bracket, but it did require moving some other components out of the way to get to the battery. I'm about 98% certain we're going vertical again this year.

[JR0405]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

We mounted our battery vertical our first four years, and last year we used the AM battery mounting kit for the kit chassis, which mounts the battery horizontally. It was in there quite securely (better than most of our home brew solutions), and only required pulling a single bungee off to remove it from the bracket, but it did require moving some other components out of the way to get to the battery. I'm about 98% certain we're going vertical again this year.

Is there a way to mount the AM mounting kit vertical on a kit chasis?

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by JR0405

Is there a way to mount the AM mounting kit vertical on a kit chasis?

Only if you have enough end sheet left, and then it still wouldn't be convenient. The AM kit takes advantage of the 3" width of the "C" on the end sheet being very slightly larger than the battery thickness, and secures the battery in that space.