Team 1535 Knights of Alloy Nearly complete robot!

[muffinxo]

Sim motor for the main joint... and a globe for the hand part

[Kevin.Core]

Originally Posted by boonski

This is team 1535's nearly completed robot. Just a few things left to do and we are finished!

Looks awesome!

looks to be light weight also, very nice job.

[flamefixed]

team rule: casters suck.

more of a saying/belief, but you get the idea.

[thefro526]

Muffinxo how much does the bot weigh? I like the usage of motors on your arm it seems like it'll have plenty of power. If you wanna continue this conversation you may want to IM at thefro526 if you have aim so that we don't get modded for "IM style conversation"

[muffinxo]

Sure thing...

[dtengineering]

In the event you have problems with the casters, you may want to consider omni-wheels from AndyMark. The omnis offer all the rolling/turning abilities of a caster, but with a larger diameter wheels and without the need for the caster to rotate in order for a directional change to occur. Heck, you can even run a chain up to them and have four wheel or six wheel drive.... and they should be an incredibly simple retro-fit for your machine.

But if the casters are working... go for it.

Jason

[PDF32100]

NO CASTERS!!!! WE LEARNED IT THE HARD WAY LAST YEARR

[muffinxo]

You people are scaring me like crazyy!!

I'm going to talk to my mentors and team leaders tomorrow and find out exactly how WELL these casters are working for us...

In the mean time, thank you guys forr the comments, always appreciated!

[AdamC]

OH NO! Casters!
Sorry for the initial outburst. But Casters are not a pretty sight. If you're not steering in the wrong direction, you're dragging like no other. I'd say make a quick fix and upgrade to tank drive if you want the skid-steer thing going. That's what my team's decided to do.
Good luck convincing them otherwise. Perhaps redirecting them to this thread will change their mind.

[boonski]

To answer the question asked most... The bot weighs approx. 94 lbs. So we still have lots of weight to still play around with!
Muffinxo chill out thus far we have had little to no problems with our casters thus far!

[coldfusion1279]

Hey guys,

Castors are smooth, and will work well if you have some smooth programming skills. I know several teams that use them year in and year out. We are from central jersey, and I think team 56 (from a neighboring town) uses them every year. I hope I am not mistaken, but they work very well for them and they are almost always at the top of the rankings.

I would suggest practicing for the next week, and if you just dont like it, switch em out.

Also, you might want to consider some sort of ball grabber, I can't see one, but maybe its just me not looking hard enough.

Good luck!

[Matt H.]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

In the event you have problems with the casters, you may want to consider omni-wheels from AndyMark. The omnis offer all the rolling/turning abilities of a caster, but with a larger diameter wheels and without the need for the caster to rotate in order for a directional change to occur. Heck, you can even run a chain up to them and have four wheel or six wheel drive.... and they should be an incredibly simple retro-fit for your machine.

But if the casters are working... go for it.

Jason

I agree with Jason in 2006 we had major problems with caster wheels and fixed everything by switching to omni wheels.

[Aren_Hill]

i'm gonna add to the no casters vote or at least in the setup you've got them in.
The main issue is you have no direct resistance to turning, if you had the traction wheels in the back you'd at least have the resistance of the inertia of the front of the bot.

i'd say either get traction wheels in the back too
or switch out the casters for omnis

[MasterRobot]

nice, ya our team is also aiming for that sorta bot...
i like your your arm is,
how well does your ball catcher work?
our ball catcher that we are probly going to use looks so much bigger....

[muffinxo]

Okay so I totally talked to my team and we're like PERFECT on the casters they are doing exactly what we want them to do and I saw the bot go down the hall at half speed today while they turned sharp corners and tried to stop really fast etc. and it's all perfect. The bot moves amazingly (not that I recommend casters)...

The arm has not worked to it's full potential yet because it hasn't been welded down yet... but I'll let you know how it works when we're there!