Drivetrain Questions

[Richard McClellan]

Originally Posted by roboticWanderor

Hey there CD, just thinking of some drive train ideas. and was wondering how to do a few things
had a few questions:
what is the best way to tension toothed belt/roller chain?

we have had real problems with chain and belt tension in past robots and it's a problem i want to try and address next year
and....

Here's how we tensioned our chain this year:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=64009
On the right is our drivetrain tensioner which we haven't had any problems with at all. It's continually adjustable just by moving the shaft up and down and tightening the position with two nuts on top and bottom. The only time our chain jumped off is when one of our IFI wheels failed. The hole for one of the wheel bearings expanded by about 3/16", and caused the wheel to wobble all over the place (hence the chain jumping off) so we had to replace the wheel.

On the left is #25 chain tensioned by a turnbuckle, which actually failed right before ship day because the eye loop that we had closed, opened up. We ended up hacking on a hose clamp to pull the van door motor shaft up - not the most elegant solution, but it works.

Originally Posted by roboticWanderor

does anyone have cads, or dimensions on the new XRP dewalt transmissions (they don't sell the old ones) available?

Our team used the DC940s this year on the drivetrain with great success. The main difference is that the hole pattern on the yellow housing is slightly larger. 624 was gracious enough to post the dimensions so we were able to start making the parts even before our transmissions arrived in the mail: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=17

The dimensions of the piano wire linkage may also need to be adjusted, we made ours to fit and didn't really look at any dimensions.