Help out rookie/less experienced teams

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

A few things I want to clear up;

There is nothing wrong with the kit wheels and there is no such thing as "too much traction". The kit wheels have even less traction than the IFI traction wheels that are recommended above.

High traction wheels can make turning difficult if the robot is not designed correctly. A 4 wheeled robot, with high traction wheels on all four corners, will not turn well... It probably won't even turn.


the best advice I can give to rookies on drive trains isn't to necessarily ditch the KOP chassis, but to go to a 6-wheel drive. The KOP frame is amazingly useful when you have limited resources.

A good thing for rookies with limited resources to do would be to design a 6 wheel drive (remember to lower the center wheel for turning, the KOP frame conveniently has this built in) that uses the KOP frame and an off the shelf gearbox (not banebots!). The easiest two would be the AndyMark single speed and the AndyMark 2-speed shifters.

A rookie team would get an amazing drivetrain with little advanced fabrication required, and would then be allowed to work on more ambitious things without worrying about a competitive drivetrain.

Also, unless you have the resources... don't get too ambitious with the drive train; If the drivetrain fails, it makes everything else useless as well.

I've found that teams have had trouble turning at a reasonable speed with KOP wheels. IFI Traction wheels seem to break traction more readily when turning, and 675 uses the Blue tread (the really tough stuff) and we haven't had problems turning.

I'm not suggesting an overly-advanced drivetrain, just a good, effecient one.

The BaneBots Gearboxes are just fine as long as you don't get the 2:1 motor adapter and you get the Hardened Carrier Plates. 675 is running 4 56mm 12:1 gearboxes (one per wheel), and the only drive issues we had was a loose PWM cable once, and re-greasing one of the gearboxes. And that was after two regionals.

Also, make sure the Carrier pins are the correct length. I've read about BaneBots shipping the short ones and robot drivetrains failing. Not good.

That all being said, I've seen bots with KOP wheels have a harder time turning than IFI Traction V2 wheeled robots.


Most of what I was writing about, however, was intended for non-Kitbots. I've already stated this, as I do not know how to build a Kitbot (This is the first year I've been really involved in building, and also the year that we've had money for raw metal for a chassis).

That being said, perhaps somebody else could make a detailed post on how to build a good Kitbot Chassis/Drivetrain?


EDIT:

Oh, and Squirrel, thanks for telling me that. After I make some revisions, I'll probably upload it.