766 Robot 2008

[octothorpe]

This is what we rolled out the door at 9pm on Monday night:

As you can see, there's still some finish-up work left for Thursday at the first regional (i.e. decals and attaching the bumpers!), but this year the design has come together quite nicely and we anticipate a successful season.

A few features:

Drivetrain
- Powered by 4 small-CIMs via AndyMark 2-speed transmission
- Uses six 3.7" custom wheels to achieve a lower profile
- Designed with monocoque construction principles in mind to reduce size, avoid cantilevering, and protect the drivetrain – the two main beams are 2x3" box tubing with holes milled out
- Uses 25 chain between wheels and 35 chain from transmission to center axle, with horizontal axle adjustment for tensioning

Elevator *
- 3 stages, forks can reach a height of 7 feet in under 3 seconds
- Employs continuous cabling to keep the center of gravity low
- Uses Spectra cable for flexibility and light weight
- Custom bearing setup does not require use of 80/20 extrusion
- Powered by 2 Fisher-Price motors with AM planetary and Toughbox

Manipulator
- Forklift-style prongs to support ball from below
- Pneumatically-actuated hoop constructed from fiberglass poles to capture the ball
- The nearer half of the ball rests within the confines of the robot when grabbed, ensuring stability and ease of turning while the robot is carrying the ball

General
- Frame is TIG/MIG welded aluminum, weighs approx. 30 lbs. without elevator stages
- Low center of gravity due to placement of just about everything in the bottom of the robot
- Total weight: 119.2 119.6 lbs (those decals will push us over... )
- Total height: 60" (no joke... hopefully it will shrink in the crate)

I should also credit our electronics, pneumatics, programming, and OI construction crews for their excellent work. Although harder to appreciate either in this picture or from a strategic standpoint, their jobs are also of utmost importance.

* In regards to the elevator, we would like to thank Team 254 for allowing us to borrow elements from their excellent design of last year. Your work is always an inspiration.

So now all that remains is to name the robot... any suggestions?

- Nick

[Blue_Mist]

Drunken Squirrel (Nicole's)
Caffeinated Squirrel (mine)
The Guillotine (more appropriate as elevator name)
Walrusbot 2.0 (remember Walrusbot 1.0? From '06 Phlebus the Transformer/Whambulance/Informer)
Invisible Rogue (Referring to the hidden chain; will it be difficult to maintenance?)
And likely more to come!

Note: That yawning cavern in the background is our infamous Closet, with self-built welding screen and scrap box in sight. It is perpetually organized chaos, the inspiration for many a limerick, and the rookie initiation with cleaning, sorting, and introduction to safety (here are the safety glasses/this is the soldering iron- this is the hot end).

[razor95kds]

Nick we actually are 119.6 (dad weighed it right before ship) and we are missing some 1/4- 20 bolts for the bottom plate so we have no weight for decals . Hooray for speed holes in our armor!!!

[octothorpe]

119.6 !?

And we don't even have decals or all those bolts in. Besides, don't forget that the camera still isn't on the robot, and although I know it's not crucial it'd still be really nice to get it onboard. Not to mention beads for the elevator drum. We may have to do more than just cheesehole polycarb. That air cylinder on top has always been too heavy for my tastes...

[burkey_turkey]

That looks like a sweet bot. We have an elevator on ours as well, but we had trouble powering the cables (continuous like you guys). Could you go into more specifics on the design of the elevator, im very curious. Once again, solid design guys, thats fantastic work!

[octothorpe]

Thanks! I'm glad you like it. Unfortunately most of the elevator mechanisms are hidden in this picture, but you can see some of it near the bottom of the robot towards the front. There are two blue shiny things which are the AndyMark planetary gearboxes that we used to adapt the Fisher-Price motors to the AM Toughbox (about a 46:1 reduction in total). This gearbox chain-drives a polycarbonate tube (visible in the photo just beneath the gearbox) mounted between the towers which acts as the drum to wind cable. We positioned the drum with the axle running front-to-back so that as the drum spins, it pulls in cable from either side. These cables go out to the towers flanking the robot and loop through a total of 8 pulleys on the different stages to form the continuous lift.

[cardinalman86]

that is pretty cool, it's looks like one of the designs we were contemplating using, until a different idea came up of course, lol, that's awesome .