pic: 1640's 2010 Pivot Assembly

[Gdeaver]

The wheel is a 4" Andymark Plactraction and the chain is #35. The wheel dead axial is a stud with nuts on both sides of the plates which provides more stiffness to the cage. We put ball thrust bearings on the bevel gear shafts to control the thrust forces. There are roller needle bearings for the vertical bevel shaft. The entire unit rotates on a combination of thrust bearings and ball bearings. For the pivot purists, having 4 steering motors allows proper wheel angle setting when turning. For chassis rotation the correct angle and velocity for the inner wheels is different than the outer wheels. We choose the window motors because they are the only way to get 4 matched motors and we wanted the FP motors for the ball processors. The kicker is pneumatic. Getting the gears and angle sensors set up on the window motors took some effort. We are using Cherry Electrical AN8 sensors and they seam to work well. The actual area on the robot taken up by the pivot assembles , steering motors and cims is relatively small. As some teams have found out the window motors are a little weak to drive 2 pivot assembles. We are driving ours 1 : 1. The programmers are having a tough go but on Tues. things were going better. This is our first try at this and it has been allot of work. Hopefully the agility will make the pivot drive worth it. And yes it drives very well over the hump.