Another electical setup idea from my team fo 08...

[cdennisxlx2]

First of all, These are all student designs, we split them in groups and gave them a basic idea and told them to design something out of/around it. The images here are a different groups ideas from the last post.





and we are planning on using Anderson power poles and circular connectors for modular power and signal wires.

thank you

[cdennisxlx2]

Also, the students are learning inventor through this exercise, and these are completely student created.

[Rich Ross]

I may not be billfred, but i give this design my stamp of approval. If you can make that (with neat wiring) FIRST legal (which is not hard) then wow. You may want to look into making "cat plates" (see team 118's board from this past year. That will save even more weight, and will be an outstanding feature that will impress the judges.

[DonRotolo]

I like this design better than the other one I saw. Nicely laid out, accomodates wiring well and efficiently, allows for troubleshooting and repairs well enough.

Note that the space beneath the Clippard tanks is also available, if you approach from beneath the robot. Good place for the fuseboxes and other miscellania that doesn't need to be accessed often.

Don

[tseres]

i like it, but personally i'd rather make it a little bigger and have the victors on the inside of the lexan to be more protected

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by tseres

i like it, but personally i'd rather make it a little bigger and have the victors on the inside of the lexan to be more protected

Given the options of putting some further protection around the box as pictured or moving everything inside (and then risking a close-quarters Victor surgery), I'll put some more protection around the outside.

My question deals more with material choices. I can't tell thicknesses of the materials, but was there any reason to choose them? Cost? Availability? More strength to tie into some other part of the robot?

[Pavan Dave]

Like the above have said, my biggest worries is about the protection. Also with the previous model you showed us there was some modularity which meant you could remove parts and add them easily. With this it seems like it will be a bit harder. Also are your students considering weight? Weight is a BIG deal. Also what size have your previous years' bases been? For an average team, that idea should be okay, especially if you're using some sort of 6 wheel or tank drive. Good luck and I hope to be seeing more from your team!

~Pavan.

[cdennisxlx2]

we were talking about using 1/8in polycarbonate with 1/4X1/4X3" aluminum pillars, everything will have tapped holes so all we would do is just screw into it, same with the victors so if we blow one its easily removable, me and the other mentors decided thats basically what we wanted to go with, but we were up to what ever idea the students came up with. the main reason for this was because we have all these just sitting around

[Steve Kaneb]

I like this exercise, it gets the students thinking and working with inventor.
I'd lean more towards total space savings and not worrying about victor repair.
As long as I've been on 190, and quite a few years before that, we've never had a problem with our victors.
The problem with an electrical box of this type is that often there simply isn't room in the robot to have everything electrical (and pneumatic in this case) centralized. The current design (which is well done and a great thing to do if possible) requires a significant amount of space on the robot, and space is the second most precious commodity on a FIRST robot.
The first most precious commodity is weight, and we've found that unless your robot has several pneumatic cylinders firing often during the match, 4 accumulators is far more than necessary. Our robot this year, which had the two major systems pneumatically actuated, got away with a compressor and 2 accumulators.
All in all, excellent way to get the students involved, keep thinking.

On an unrelated note: If you can afford it (and find them), I highly recommend using nylon bolts for mounting electronics. The bolts are just fasteners, and weight is always at a premium. We used them with great success this past year.

[Dan Petrovic]

wow I really like that idea of having the reservoirs under all of the electronics.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Well guys, I am liking this one a lot. The only thing missing is the terminal block for power distro and the dreaded orange light. I am guessing (and I mean guessing, I will find out when you do!) that the block will be back this year. I think that can be easily accomodated with a rotation of the small fuse panel and the large fuse panel. A little move and voila! you have space for the terminal block. Please note that this design really minimizes wire runs by keeping everything close together and centrally located for the fuse panels. Visualize the wire savings if all the components had the power input terminals on the top side of this design. It is almost an inspector's heaven as everything is open and in view. Even the Spike for the compressor is right at the compressor. Congratulations on a design that responds to robot needs, replacement worries and inspector desires.

[dtengineering]

Protecting the victors from having little bits of metal fall into them and short them out is important, but so is protecting the RC. During build last year (or was it two years ago, now... I forget) we had a small aluminum chip fall onto the RC and land in such a way that it shorted out a couple of unattached I/O pins on the RC. This led to all sorts of RC weirdness... thankfully no permanent damage... but since then I've figured that having a lid over everything is a big asset.

This is a great exercise, though... I might have to set a few of my students loose on a similar project just to get them thinking and practicing on inventor.

Jason

P.S. Yeah, I know... never drill or cut over the electronics... but those little chips get everywhere.

[cdennisxlx2]

we rarely have problems with chips, and almost never have any problems with victors tho we were throwing around the idea of a screen covering for the victors

[copperhead47]

veeerrrry swanky i like it- we tried making a removable panel last year and that my friends, is the making of a purely superb modular design (i hope by anderson power-pole you mean mini andersons- which was some thing I've stumbled across over the summer)

CHEERS!