Electrical Board Mounting

[Steven Sigley]

Our Electronics Panel was one double sided piece of lexan which rested on 2 pieces of aluminum on our robot, here are some pictures.

Always use bolts to mount (except the gaming adapter, zip ties for that), and zip ties to organize.


http://www.vandenrobotics.com/plogge...icture&id=2837

http://www.vandenrobotics.com/plogge...icture&id=2814

[kgzak]

Originally Posted by Steven Sigley

Our Electronics Panel was one double sided piece of lexan which rested on 2 pieces of aluminum on our robot, here are some pictures.

Always use bolts to mount (except the gaming adapter, zip ties for that), and zip ties to organize.


http://www.vandenrobotics.com/plogge...icture&id=2837

http://www.vandenrobotics.com/plogge...icture&id=2814

I was never going to use zip ties but people on my team said other people use them.

Our board last year was an "L" shape on the side of the robot. It was all aluminum but the cRIO was on a piece of polycarbonate bolted on with plastic screws. Everything else was put on aluminum boards with bolts and the holes where tapped to save on weight.

This year we started off with a flat piece of aluminum with all the electronics mounted on there. The cRIO was sitting on a piece of polycarbonate but somehow metal screws were used to fasten it to the board. So after that one of our mentors got scared about grounding and had us switch to a full poly carbonate board in an "L" shape. We used plastic screws to fasten everything to the polycarbonate.

[Steven Sigley]

Originally Posted by kgzak

I was never going to use zip ties but people on my team said other people use them.

Sorry I meant to say "we always use bolts"
Though it is safer as you're less likely to have a component come free while traveling at high speeds.

Oh and just to prove everyone makes mistakes, I made not only the nice panel that I previously posted, but the year before that I had a cool idea to make a removable box, well:


Now, this isn't such a bad idea so long as you find an effective way to deal with masses of PWM cables. I think I handled the power cables well with the Anderson connectors, you can see 2 plugs with all of the power cables contained coming out of the top. Along with a battery plug. It would've been clean if it was just those 3 plugs, but when we added sensors going into the box, I just had no well-planned way to handle them and it became a great mess.

Now it still only took about 4 minutes to remove or install but only about 10 seconds of that was spent on the power cables.

If you're planning for an electronics box, make sure you look at all the examples out there from the past on chief delphi and such and learn from mistakes and improve upon existing designs.

More photos of the box:

[NickE]

We always try to place all of our electronics on the robot's baseplate. This year and last year, they were on a waterjetted aluminum plate with pre-drilled mounting holes for everything. All of the holes are then tapped and we screw the components into them. The cRio was isolated with a rubber pad, although the powdercoat is not conductive.

Wires are run so that they can be easily traced by looking at them. Zip ties are used when necessary.

Here's this year's board without the cRio. Some of it needs to be tidied up, but its mostly done except for the wires in the bottom left corner.


-Nick

[kstl99]

Originally Posted by NickE

We always try to place all of our electronics on the robot's baseplate. This year and last year, they were on a waterjetted aluminum plate with pre-drilled mounting holes for everything. All of the holes are then tapped and we screw the components into them. The cRio was isolated with a rubber pad, although the powdercoat is not conductive.

Wires are run so that they can be easily traced by looking at them. Zip ties are used when necessary.

Here's this year's board without the cRio. Some of it needs to be tidied up, but its mostly done except for the wires in the bottom left corner.


-Nick

Nice wiring! When wiring is this planned out and neat it eliminates many potential problems and makes troubleshooting so much easier.

Most of our electrical components were mounted with screws and lockwashers onto a 3/16" Lexan sheet mounted low to help with center of gravity. We used many zip ties and some wireway where we could. Our electrical board slid into two U-chanel pieces of aluminum so it could be slid out to work on. We used the Igus track to run the wires up to the chassis where it branched out to the motors, solenoids, etc. One big advantage of having a seperate electrical panel is that it can be assembled, wired and tested while others are working on the rest of the robot.

[hyperdude]

What we've done 2009 and this year was mount the cRIO on top of a piece of polycarbonate with a length of surgical tubing around the bottom edge to act as a cushion.

The rest of the electronics go wherever we find space on the bot. Though this year I was able to convince our electronics guy to put all the Jags on a vertical piece of poly to save space. Unfortunately the Jags ended up mounted behind the cRIO, making repairs a BIT difficult.