pic: Latest on wood-coast chassis

[Rick]

Originally Posted by Bertman

It drives well, seems to be durable and has a rotating turrent which fires 12" long sections of swimming noodles as fast as you can pull the trigger. Great for indoor demos around small children.

I love shooting small children with pool noodles.

[roboticWanderor]

Story time!
assigned to create a demo robot by our coach, we decided to make an awesome pool noodle shooter. Due to grade deadlines, we had to abandon certain features such as an auto feeding magazine that could store more pool noodles, a tilt, and full 360 degree rotation capabilities. these may be added on by later classes of LASA Robotics seniors, and Twiggy, and its fantastic weapon (project racecar), will continue to evolve into a fantastic demo robot!
However, that dosen't make it the most awesome thing ever!!! the gravity fed hopper, pnumatic firing pin, and flywheels make for an impressive rapid fire.This thing makes a tremendous noise when spinning, and loves to shred pool noddles who don't behave!
The flywheels are actually zip tied to the aluminum Andy mark hubs, which in turn are JB welded to the output pinions of the bosh drill motors. true story.

As for the chassis and drive train, dewalt drills (including their original motors) power each side. This thing is pretty hefty, able to power it's way over dirt humps, up handicap ramps, through stacks of plastic crates, and can certainly try to bash its way though walls unharmed. I even managed to hop a curb with it.
hope yall enjoyed our project! we are really proud of it!

[excel2474]

Originally Posted by roboticWanderor

Story time!
assigned to create a demo robot by our coach, we decided to make an awesome pool noodle shooter. Due to grade deadlines, we had to abandon certain features such as an auto feeding magazine that could store more pool noodles, a tilt, and full 360 degree rotation capabilities. these may be added on by later classes of LASA Robotics seniors, and Twiggy, and its fantastic weapon (project racecar), will continue to evolve into a fantastic demo robot!
However, that dosen't make it the most awesome thing ever!!! the gravity fed hopper, pnumatic firing pin, and flywheels make for an impressive rapid fire.This thing makes a tremendous noise when spinning, and loves to shred pool noddles who don't behave!
The flywheels are actually zip tied to the aluminum Andy mark hubs, which in turn are JB welded to the output pinions of the bosh drill motors. true story.

As for the chassis and drive train, dewalt drills (including their original motors) power each side. This thing is pretty hefty, able to power it's way over dirt humps, up handicap ramps, through stacks of plastic crates, and can certainly try to bash its way though walls unharmed. I even managed to hop a curb with it.
hope yall enjoyed our project! we are really proud of it!

You should be proud of this one. This is a really cool idea for a demo robot. I was just trying to think of a good demo robot for out team to work on and this looks like a great idea. What size tube do you use for your barrel? And what type of material is it made of. I also love the turret, but i'm not exactly sure how it works. Do you have better pictures of the turret or a drawing? Congratulation on the awesome robot and good luck this year.

Aaron

Very nice! Did you have any bad experiences cutting the Red Oak? Also, what type of wood glue did you use? I know in the longboarding world, we love Titebond 3, but who knows what you folks used. That's really cool to see teams going for alternate frame materials... Bet you could swing some kind of award for that (A more "green" drivetrain)!

[Bertman]

Thanks,
Cutting the red oak is simple. Just a sharp carbide tipped blade and a table sawand a sharp chissel. The joints are mortise & tennon with some assembly techniques used in boat building. For glue I used gorilla glue because I wanted to see how it held up (pretty good so far), though plain carpenters glue in a good joint would be more than sufficient.

[sdcantrell56]

So based off of this chassis, if you decided you wanted to use a west-coast style drivetrain would you make it out of wood or would you stick with aluminum? Have you thought about laying one layer of fiberglass on it as well?

[Bertman]

That will be a team decision.

[sdcantrell56]

what is the general consensus right now. I guess my main question is given the choice of a west coast style drivetrain, is there any advantage in your mind that would sway your team from using a wood frame?

[Bertman]

Not in my mind, The first five years we competed in FIRST we had a wooden chassis with zero failures. But wood is not the only alternative we are looking at so our decision process is not yet complete, and I am not the whole team. I do believe that with a good design and good manufacturing techniques wood is an excellent choice for a chassis. Just my $.02.

[sdcantrell56]

Thank you bertman. Thats the answer I was looking for. Basically a summary of the performance in relation to a similarly designed metal chassis. I have a question about construction. With the resources we have it would be easier to use plywood such as a quality okoume board since we could laser cut it. Do you think layering 2 pieces of 1/2" thickness together to get a thick enough piece for a bearing would be strong enough and would the thing as a whole be strong enough. It would all be epoxied together with some screws, and possibly wrapped in fiberglass. I too am very interested in alternative materials. I might end up building a chassis to try in the coming weeks.

[colin340]

is that the Keyang motor or the Nippon-Denso that runs on the flywheel gear
it look like a Keyang to me but poeple have been calling it the window motor and to me that means Nippon-Denso

Looks like a Keyang, which would actually run the powered seats....