Chassis Design

[Team 3266]

We are having problems designing a stable chassis for this year. We have already decided to go with a 4WD Mecanum drive train and we have also already designed our arm. The arm will have 2 pivot points and a pneumatic grabber that can extended to the highest scoring peg. Our only problem is designing the chassis that is stable, has most the weight towards the bottom, and can still support an arm that can reach 10 feet. Any ideas or comments would be of great help. Thanks

[EricH]

The KOP frame won't work?

If it's minor modifications, start there. IIRC, there isn't a whole lot of modification needed to do mecanum.

Now all you have to do is keep everything low--that's why you put a big piece of plywood on the bottom to pile ballast on (like the battery, compressor, cRIO, PDB, motors...).

[JesseK]

It's possible to put both the shoulder and 'wrist' motors very low. For the shoulder joint, it's a simple chain/belt run. For the wrist joint, you can run chain/belt up to the axle of the shoulder joint, use sprockets that have bearings inside them and are attached to each other, then run chain/belt to the wrist.

The sprockets for the wrist spin independently of the orientation of the shoulder (due to the bearings), which is why this works. It also keeps the heavier components (motors and transmissions) as low as possible.