Off season projects

[JamesCH95]

I know that us FIRST junkies can't go the 9 months without a hit, so I'd like to know what off-season projects you do/robots you build. I built a robot for a school project (great excuse) called Dex. She has a wireless video camer with full pan and tilt (thank you ebay! it was $1) AWD, 4 wheel steering, and a monocoque chassis. I used stock RC car transmissions with Fisher Price motors and an old Basic Stamp RC. It also has a trailer that can raise and fire Estes rockets (no pics of it, sadly). the other robot in the second pic is my team's bot from '04. Andy A and I have also been working on fitting an old cult RC car, the Grasshopper, with a Victor and Fisher Price motor. The results have been phenominal! The victor worked perfectly with an RC control unit (once calibrated) and the FP provides almost too much power... almost ;-). It's powered by two 7.2V packs wired in series, which makes for good top-end on the FP. I don't have pictures of it yet, but they are coming. Any questions about either project email me at Jamesch13@gmail.com

Post your projects, preferrably with pics!

[thoughtful]

That looks awesome, must be fun working on it, and also driving it around!

[sanddrag]

How did you put the FP motors in the Clodbuster transmissions? Did you pull the pinion and put on a different one or make an adjustable mount or what?

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

How did you put the FP motors in the Clodbuster transmissions? Did you pull the pinion and put on a different one or make an adjustable mount or what?

I pressed (hammered) a new gear onto all the FP motors and just swapped them in, the RC motors and FP have the same mounting points. Though the one on the grasshopper took a little shimming to get to mesh right. It is impressive you recognized the trannys as the Clodbusters ;-)

[NoodleKnight]

My friend and I are trying to restore our 2002 robot to use as our show/presentation robot. Apparently our 2002 OI/RC broke, so we made the decision to scrap our 2003 robot and use the parts to restore our 2002 robot. No pictures as of yet. Anyways, so far we've only painted the frame and mounted two wheels.

[Arefin Bari]

a very cool project to work on. very nice. now when is Dex and team 95's robot competiting? are they doing Zone Zeal, Stack Attack or First Frenzy?


i have worked on several projects. one of the best that me and one of my team member made was the HexCrawler. it was pretty cool (atleast it taught me P-Basic). and Edubots are always fun to play with

[greencactus3]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

I pressed (hammered) a new gear onto all the FP motors and just swapped them in, the RC motors and FP have the same mounting points. Though the one on the grasshopper took a little shimming to get to mesh right. It is impressive you recognized the trannys as the Clodbusters ;-)

anyone know how to pull off the pinion gear on the fp without a gearpull? as i dont have access to one.

[tkwetzel]

As many CDer's already know, one of my projects can be seen here.

[NoodleKnight]

Originally Posted by greencactus3

anyone know how to pull off the pinion gear on the fp without a gearpull? as i dont have access to one.

Do you have access to a press? If so use that and press the motor shaft out of the gear.
Or, if you don't mind loosing the gear, just use a dremel and cut the gear (gear only, not the FP shaft), in half, then just pry apart. It's pretty time consuming but it doesn't require a gear puller or arbor press.

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by NoodleKnight

Do you have access to a press? If so use that and press the motor shaft out of the gear.
Or, if you don't mind loosing the gear, just use a dremel and cut the gear (gear only, not the FP shaft), in half, then just pry apart. It's pretty time consuming but it doesn't require a gear puller or arbor press.

I don't have access to anything but a vice and hammer to remove/add gears. All i did was hammer on the gear (very carefully) and to take it off tighten the vice around the FP axel (but don't snug it) so that it's under the gear, and use a nail of other available metal rod to hammer out the motor shaft. This has worked well for me, but it requires patience and care, you can easily screw things up.

I will also add that I did this entire project with nothing more than my toolbox of tools and a hand drill, hehe, talk about match-drill...

[Jeff_Rice]

We are using ***** **** to ****** **** to the ******* while ******* is still ****. We call this ********* because ***** is not *********** to the ******** *******. This is nothing compared to our ******** ***** which will allow us to ******* **** ***** the *** *******.

* censored


Basically we have gone over our robot weaknesses and researched methods of improving them. We are now doing team building exercises, which are mini projects to train our new members. That is about as close to off season projects as we have gotten.

[spears312]

We have spent the better half of the last four months on planing and finally running an awesome Lego league competition. We also worked a little on a old robot we pulled out, but we ran out of time to finish it up before build season starts.

[Koko Ed]

Over the summer we had the site remodeled. The project was led by Ellery . The PAW room was moved out due east and the old PAW room was turned into a museam that has everything X-Cat from 1992 (no not the robot, FIRST has it) to 2004. We have a new rug (straight from Atlanta formerly known as the Newton field) and a new paint job. The site looks sharp.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Over the summer we had the site remodeled. The project was led by Ellery . The PAW room was moved out due east and the old PAW room was turned into a museam that has everything X-Cat from 1992 (no not the robot, FIRST has it) to 2004. We have a new rug (straight from Atlanta formerly known as the Newton field) and a new paint job. The site looks sharp.

Heh.
Whaddya know. I put up my website files from school by mistake.
Ah well I guess they'll do.

[RbtGal1351]

Our team split into 4 or 5 groups to work to different areas, like pneumatics, programming, autoCADing, and electronics, to gain some experience before the build period.
It has actually worked pretty well so far, and seeing as we dont have much time left, good luck to us. We also tried to get an adult mentor for each group; we got 2 alumni (last years seniors), teachers and parents to come in and work with a group once a week. It worked out really well, when we were on task. And when the two programming groups weren't fighting over the computers.
(Hey! It's not my fault the other computer wasn't set up! so WHY did they keep stealing MY computer... )

~Stephanie