Mechanical/Electrical Off-Season Projects

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Tytus Gerrish

i think it be cool to dress up like aliens and storm a small town in the Midwest armed with what appear to be blasters firing green tracers and "abducting" unwitting country folk.

I like the way you think....



And back the main point of the thread, 294 is building a revised prototype base with integrated shifters. Our base was the only part that never had a single failure this year, and it'll be even better after two more iterations for next season. I doubt it will be able to compete with the top dogs, but we'll be able to hold our own.

[cooker52]

Over this summer, I plan on working with 3ds Max, Inventor, and learning a little bit of everything else on how to fully build a robot. A few guys and I are planning on making a segway. I will hopefully soon have some pictures of the Inventor file, in about a month. All I do in school now is design it.

Originally Posted by T3_1565

I'm already CADing a crab drive in inventor, so I may steal some ideas from the concept from 114ManualLabor. lol I need to learn autodesk anyways so its a good thing.

I feel honored. Though it's not really stealing, I'll gladly share my designs and help you all out whenever you want/need it.

And as for the crab as an off season project, I doubt my team will fund me to make it... It wouldn't be cheap.

[seanl]

our team split up into small groups and we are having a small competition.
were making a robot that is a square foot. we took both extra cims hehe . u think cims will be overkill for the drivetrain for a 30 lb robot, or is more power better.

[T3_1565]

Originally Posted by 114ManualLabor

I feel honored. Though it's not really stealing, I'll gladly share my designs and help you all out whenever you want/need it.

And as for the crab as an off season project, I doubt my team will fund me to make it... It wouldn't be cheap.

I agree with you on that. I will have a hard enough time getting money to prototype one, but we, as a team want to prototype omniwheels as well. We will see you guys in 2 years once we have paid off our debt from making prototypes lol

Originally Posted by seanl

our team split up into small groups and we are having a small competition.
were making a robot that is a square foot. we took both extra cims hehe . u think cims will be overkill for the drivetrain for a 30 lb robot, or is more power better.

Woooah!

I hope you're not direct driving those. CIMs spin at an unloaded speed of about 5400 rpm. Direct drive would be uncontrollable. If anything, running them through a banebot, which would have a 4 inch wheel mounted on it, that would give you a calculated unloaded speed of about 6 fps... So I suggest using the banebots. They're actually really nice transmissions, they just get a lot of bad rep.

I'd suggest using two globes direct driven to some skyways. We use those in our offseason competition a lot, and they work great.

[pakratt1991]

We are going to build an arm robot, something that we didn't try this year, but as a team we are really looking forward to working on it. Our mentors wanted a week off so were all sitting around with ants in our pants because we have some crazy ideas (hacking a wii mote??? )

[Skute327]

my team participates in the local "pumpkin fling" each year we build a trebuchet (a mideivil weapon kinda simalar to a catapult) to throw a five pound pumpkin as far as possible. we compete with other local groups, this past year we threw 808 feet!
pics are in pictures section of our website:
http://www.westisliprobotics.com

http://www.westisliprobotics.com/med...bcomp/mov1.MOV

http://www.westisliprobotics.com/med...bcomp/mov2.MOV

[Donut]

I personally will be working with one of our old robots or my VEX robot to get more fun sensor and autonomous stuff working, just because I can. We know how to use pretty much every sensor we can want, we just have to figure out why they weren't co-operating on our robot this year, since we never got time to actually test with it.

I also have plans for some cool VEX things. I belive I've come up with an idea for an FVC legal 2-speed transmission that will be ridiculously tiny for something that complex. Even though I was my teams programmer I have alot of fun designing transmissions for whatever reason.

[Smaug]

work on my combat bot and build a lazy Susan that go's up 6 feet and can be drivin around. its for 1 of our mentors he donated our robot cart and crate so this is the trade off he want this for burning man.

[Jeremiah Johnson]

Looks as though our crab drive cart idea was shot down tonight, although my brother is now working diligently to cut costs. Maybe we should instead redesign our cart and make it so that the cart itself powers upward instead of using a drill manually. It also needs a new paint job, really bad. It's been painted flames since 2003 when it was made and it's gotten scratched up. I say we chrome it out... drop some spinners (our logo machined) on the tires... and add some orange and blue cold cathodes to the bottom.

EDIT: How could I forget?! We're building yet another cardboard boat to compete at the Rock Island and Galesburg races. We've won three of four events we've been to and have gotten the Spirit award at all events. We also have two second place and one third place award. I hope maybe this year we will make a fun boat since we have a proven winner (speed record at both events). We've entertained a crabbing boat... yes, I said crabbing BOAT. I don't think it would be too hard. We certainly wouldn't win, but it would be SUPER FREAKY AWESOME!

Personally I'm starting, at least, two Vex Challenge teams, possibly more. I'm helping with a DARPA vehicle, and I'll be promoting FIRST throughout the Quad Cities and surrounding areas on a personal tour of schools, hopefully. The first date is sometime soon at United Township with James, an electrical engineer.

Originally Posted by Tytus Gerrish

i think it be cool to dress up like aliens and storm a small town in the Midwest armed with what appear to be blasters firing green tracers and "abducting" unwitting country folk.

Come to the QC and I'll definitely help you with that Tytus. I know where all the "HICKS" live... SHERRARD*!


*Happens to be one of the schools that our team is made up of.

[Brian J. R.]

Well, as a team we are going to repaint the crate (it seems white and black paint is REAL susceptible to scratches) and along with that, add plenty of things to it that will make it easier on whoever is in the pits (a fold out bench perhaps.......) Another team project is building a new cart...Going to keep that under wraps for now.

Personal projects are:
1) I am going to attempt to build a Gauss Cannon

2) Work out the designs for a swerve drive (this might be with the team but it has been a personal project sense I first saw it in action)

3) Work alot more with Photoshop (co-graphic designer for my team)

4) Help the webmaster (who happens to be the other graphics designer) construct the website for next year

5) Lastly I want to begin learning the electrical systems so that in case of electrical failure (happened in Vegas, a speed controller blew and we lost the drive systems...) there are more then 2 people that know what they are doing.

[seanl]

Originally Posted by 114ManualLabor

Woooah!

I hope you're not direct driving those. CIMs spin at an unloaded speed of about 5400 rpm. Direct drive would be uncontrollable. If anything, running them through a banebot, which would have a 4 inch wheel mounted on it, that would give you a calculated unloaded speed of about 6 fps... So I suggest using the banebots. They're actually really nice transmissions, they just get a lot of bad rep.

I'd suggest using two globes direct driven to some skyways. We use those in our offseason competition a lot, and they work great.

we only managed to get 1 globe you should have seen the people in the workshop when our teacher said go! i grabbed 2 cims, 1 big cim, 2 fp. im probably going to make a custom 1 speed gearbox, 2 speed if i have time with 4 inch wheels, do you know were we can get some cheap 4 in wheels.

[geeknerd99]

Several things, all at once. I have more involvement in some than other:

1 (My pet project): Lead my 4-man (actually 3-man and 1-lady) team in designing and constructing a pair of tandem recumbent bicycles from the ground up.

2: Finish hovercraft prototypes and make 4 people's worth of rideable hovercrafts

3: Redesign and mount air cannons onto aforementioned vehicles.

The tandem bicycle idea is the one that's gonna really get off the ground (hopefully it'll stay on the ground once its built ). I've been studying many designs of both tandem and recumbent bicycles, as well as a few existing designs. Me and my electron-cough-design team are all convinently learning how to TIG weld right now too....

[MGoelz]

Well...
I plan on learning all about Inventor and 3Ds MAX, since we no longer have a subteam dedicated to animation. I already can use Inventor, but I know that there are a lot of things you can do with it, that I just haven't figured out yet.

I'm also planning on learning how to use Excel inside and out. One of my teammates and I were amazed at the program that Brian (one of our co-captains) made for scouting. I don't know that much about it, and definitely can't write my own programs for it, so that's what I plan on learning.

Oh yeah, and help build that second robot for the IRI.