Transmissions Effective in This Year's Game?

[Starke]

The thread is intended to see if a team's transmission (single or multi-speed) worked for this year's game.

It includes what a team used for a transmission, single or multi-speed.

Did a team with a single speed seem to need a multi-speed or were you fine as is? Did a team with a multi-speed not need it? That kind of stuff.

Sorry for the confusion.

[petek]

Originally Posted by Swampdude

I've been wanting to give a big thumbs up for the AM shifters. Those guys made a great product. We gave them hell with no failures whatsoever.

You can say that again. 103 used AM shifters; in fact, going with them early in build helped us get our chassis done quickly. Low gear gave great low speed torque and their solid shift-on-the-fly let Scott get a good launch and immediately shift to high gear for all those "cap the other alliance home row" runs.

Despite a number of opinions I've heard to the contrary, I think this year's game was made for shifter bots.

[aaronD341]

we also used the andy mark 2 speed trannys. They were GREAT but we didn't really use ours to it's full potential untill we gave it automatic shifting which made the drive 10x better in my opinion. But i do not think having 2 speeds were a must for this years game, see as there was not as much pushing as in years past.

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Spikey

I was surprised that more teams did not use them.

I was actually surprised how many teams did use them.

Originally Posted by Spikey

Our team used the kit transmissions to great effect, we combined them with a 6 wheel drive train and 6 pneumatic tires we had one of the most powerful drive trains of any robot at our regionals.

Sorry but no you didn't. Power does not come from putting more wheels in your drivetrain or more air in your tires, it comes from putting more motors (or more powerful motors) in your drivetrain. So unless nearly all the teams in your regional had fewer motors or weaker motors in your drivetrain than you did, they were every bit as powerful as you.

Perhaps what you mean is you were able to apply more force on the ground than they?

[danield710]

me and another team member (ultimateP) wanted to order the AM transmissions but because of some confrontations on the team we ended up not ordering them and ended up going with a kit transmission modified to only have on CIM per side (we got very parranoyed with weight this year after we were .1-.2 lbs overweight last year and we ended up using a CIM on our telescoping arm this year)

i would have to say that transmissions could be effective in this years game; out of the ones that i saw i would have to say that AMs were probably the msot efficient, from the teams that i saw using them, the team that i saw the most was 179 and they were unstoppable, most of the time they had it i high gear and they would speed around the entire field capping tetras and when it came time for pushing they could switch into low and push whoever was in there way

for this years game transmissions werent very neccessary but they were helpful at times, if you could use them it was another attribute for ur bot

[Kyle Love]

This year I found our trannys to be quite beneficial. We used low gear to do tight maneuvering in our end of the field and used high gear to get down field and take away the opponents home row. I must give some rep to the KOP gear box. We used the doubled up arm design to power our arm this year. We never had serious problems, just a few minor ones. Great job to Paul Copioli on the KOP gear boxes!

[CyberWolf_22]

Obviously team 647 used the DeWALT transmissions this year (Joe P. one of our mentors wrote the white paper) we absolutely loved the transmissions because of there weight. They weight far less then the kit transmissions and provided on the fly 3 speed shifting. We ran the robot normally in 2nd gear and used 1st when we need to push another robot. We rarely used 3rd gear unless we needed to fly across the field, which did come in handy at different times. Could we have competed just as effectively with out the shifting transmissions probably but did the transmissions help us when we got in to tight situations most definitely. In addition, since they are so lightweight we would have probably used them even if we did not want to shift. We even used them on are arm and our extension without shifting capability.

[Ellery]

To jump on the Band wagon the AndyMark Trannys were awesome. We built 2 drive chassis this year in the first 2 weeks and at least gave our drivers some practice for the first time. Actually in competition we decided to take the shifters off due to weight and also the drivers said they rarely needed it anyways for this year's game. The kit transmissions were very reliable for our arm comtrols.

By the way you should check out our shimano brake calipers on steroids this year for arm stability control. It worked like a masterpiece.

Some day I'll try out the dewalt solution. Maybe next year

Ellery

[team222badbrad]

Effective, YES very much so.

Anyone who paid close attention to our machine could easily tell how many times we shifted during a match, without sparing a second our time.

I think that a two speed transmission was really good enough for this years game, along with past years and yes I am speaking from experience.

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Sorry but no you didn't. Power does not come from putting more wheels in your drivetrain or more air in your tires, it comes from putting more motors (or more powerful motors) in your drivetrain. So unless nearly all the teams in your regional had fewer motors or weaker motors in your drivetrain than you did, they were every bit as powerful as you.

Perhaps what you mean is you were able to apply more force on the ground than they?

I think power is quite accurate from what he was describing.

In the linear power domain, Power = Force * Velocity. Therefore, if he can get more force to the floor at the same velocity, then his robot base is moving with more power than if his wheels had less traction.

Slip between the wheels and the floor is another loss for the overall system. From a system standpoint, his use of the word power is perfectly correct.

[sanddrag]

Isn't mechanical power actually torque times speed? But either way in the case of a wheel the force is proportional to the torque.

I was looking at it from the standpoint of peak power (based on motors) in optimal conditions (unlimited traction) where you are looking at it from the standpoint of actual power (based on the wheels) in applied conditions (wheels will slip at some point). So for this debate I suppose the most important thing is the applied power not theoretical power so I lose.

Sorry for the diversion, now back to the thread.

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Isn't mechanical power actually torque times speed? But either way in the case of a wheel the force is proportional to the torque.

I was looking at it from the standpoint of peak power (based on motors) in optimal conditions (unlimited traction) where you are looking at it from the standpoint of actual power (based on the wheels) in applied conditions (wheels will slip at some point). So for this debate I suppose the most important thing is the applied power not theoretical power so I lose.

Sorry for the diversion, now back to the thread.

Mechanical power has two forms: rotational and linear.

Rotational power = torque * angular velocity

Linear power = force * linear velocity

[Mark Jones]

We ordered some AndyMark gearboxes to replace some that I had designed which were very heavy and required pneumatics to shift. I made some modifications to the stock AM design to make it fit our application and to lighten them a little. While making these mods, I also redesigned the shifting to use a servo. They performed beautifully and gained us 8lbs to use on other features. Although we didn't shift to low very often, it was there when we needed it. I'll sacrifice the little extra weight for a 2-speed tranny any day.

A big thank you to Andy and Mark for a great product.

PS...Anyone what to see a picture of our reworked AndyMark gearboxes? I call them AndyMark squared...Get it...AndyMarkMark.

[Spikey]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Sorry but no you didn't. Power does not come from putting more wheels in your drivetrain or more air in your tires, it comes from putting more motors (or more powerful motors) in your drivetrain. So unless nearly all the teams in your regional had fewer motors or weaker motors in your drivetrain than you did, they were every bit as powerful as you.

Perhaps what you mean is you were able to apply more force on the ground than they?

I would have to argue that putting more wheels on the ground made a differnce, we faced robots with just as strong drive trains, but because we could put more wheels on the floor we could push people quite well.
Teams like 56 and 103 had beautiful machines with amazing transmissions, however we faced them in pushing matches and in one case when 103 was trying to cap our home row we pushed them sideways into a wall.

What also helped was some gearing down that we did off of the tranny shafts and onto the wheels. That probably made a large differnce over the kit configuration, but still the kit trannys were very well built and could provide lots of power when used correctly.

[XtremeEagle04]

Our two speed trannys get a big TWO THUMBS UP. when on the other end of the field playing a little defence we'd keep 'em in low and do great, then at the end of the match with 5 seconds left we just flip it into high and zoom across the field.

if you want to see a pic tere is one in the gallery