pic: 816's 2009 Drivetrain!

[Jared Russell]

I think it does violate the bumper rules. Which is ridiculous. The GDC needs to clear up the intent of their bumper rules ASAP. Your team, and mine, and dozens of others, have frames that may or may not be illegal, and all we can do is sit and wait for the GDC to make their ruling.

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by Abwehr

I think it does violate the bumper rules. Which is ridiculous. The GDC needs to clear up the intent of their bumper rules ASAP. Your team, and mine, and dozens of others, have frames that may or may not be illegal, and all we can do is sit and wait for the GDC to make their ruling.

I don't see this frame as violating the rules as long as the end caps are 6" long. Why would you think that it was illegal?
FYI: Check team update 2. They have answered many bumper questions with this update.

[Jared Russell]

It all depends on whether the front ends of their frame are at least 6" wide, so I was a bit hasty to call it illegal. It's hard to say based on the photo. As long as they are, you are right, they are legal.

[Vikesrock]

The front ends of the "wheel modules" of the kit chassis are 6.25 inches wide when constructed as as shown according to my CAD model of a VERY similar chassis we are going to start constructing today.

[AustinDpOwers89]

well if they're 6.25'' then yeah, they're fine. i was just expressing my concern incase they weren't and if 816 wasn't entirely aware of the crappy new bumper rules.

[thefro526]

Thanks for the concern on the bumper rules. The front sections are slightly more than 6 inches wide which will allow up to run a legal bumper on either side.

Btw, for anyone building a wide base from the kitbot chassis this year, we found that if you build it per AndyMark's instruction you'll have and ugly open corner on one end. We fixed this by cutting one side rail 1 inch longer than the others.

[Vikesrock]

Are the chain runs shown in the picture temporary or are you just using the extra drive sprockets as temporary spacers?

Or I suppose they could be for attaching some unknown mechanism to the drive transmissions.

[craigboez]

We are building a very similar chassis for prototyping. Just curious, did you test this 6WD configuration against a 4WD configuration (like the one in the picture, but without the middle wheels)? We're planning to, just wondering if there are any substantial advantages to either design.

Comments?

[Danny McC]

Originally Posted by craigboez

We are building a very similar chassis for prototyping. Just curious, did you test this 6WD configuration against a 4WD configuration (like the one in the picture, but without the middle wheels)? We're planning to, just wondering if there are any substantial advantages to either design.

Comments?

Nope we went straight to the 6WD as far as I know. Unless they did it when I wasnt there which isn't much.

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Vikesrock

Are the chain runs shown in the picture temporary or are you just using the extra drive sprockets as temporary spacers?

Or I suppose they could be for attaching some unknown mechanism to the drive transmissions.

Originally I designed it so that the front chain went all the way back to the transmission. Then after we started putting the chains on we noticed that we didn't really need it so we shortened the chain up. The only reason the sprocket was still on the was because we didn't get a chance to make a spacer yet.

Originally Posted by craigboez

We are building a very similar chassis for prototyping. Just curious, did you test this 6WD configuration against a 4WD configuration (like the one in the picture, but without the middle wheels)? We're planning to, just wondering if there are any substantial advantages to either design.

Comments?

I don't think it would be substantially different aside from the fact that your distributing your weight over 6 points instead of 4 which can cause the robot to maneuver differently. I have a personal preference towards 6 wheel drives and that's kinda why we went in this direction. You should be fine with a 4 wheel drive with similar geometry and then if you wanted to you could always add a 5th and 6th wheel

[cardinalman86]

First of all, i like the zip-tied battery But this is pretty awesome. We've got a four wheel base with the same orientation. I was just wondering how the one cim was goin for you with six wheels. Last time we drove with six wheels, it was easier to use two cims and we were able to maneuver better.

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by cardinalman86

First of all, i like the zip-tied battery But this is pretty awesome. We've got a four wheel base with the same orientation. I was just wondering how the one cim was goin for you with six wheels. Last time we drove with six wheels, it was easier to use two cims and we were able to maneuver better.

This year we decided that it didn't offer much of an advantage because with the traction available we're only going to be able to put down about 9lbs of force before the wheels slip. Also because there's less friction against the drive in general and it requires less force to turn we deemed the second motor unnecessary. If we ever needed to we could always bolt a second motor into the tough box without much trouble.

[Akash Rastogi]

Looks good Dustin. Can it push MORT around though?