pic: Team Xbot #488 2015 Robot

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Madison

The drive should be called, "Oops, what can we do to fix this?" I made a ridiculous mistake and we had to start the design from scratch at the end of week 3. This drive is a result of that; it was a way to salvage as many of the COTS parts we'd already purchased and to minimize the need to buy many more. In the end, over two robots, the mistake probably cost the team something like $3000.

Kevin -- The chain lift is too complex. Especially our implementation. Y'all made the right choice.

This season's been rough.

Ouch. We nearly made a similar mistake. Long wheelbase + 6" mecanums and clamping gearboxes meant we'd be dragging the gears on the platform crossing it. Various members wanted to up to the 8" AM mecanums because they were "stronger" and PDV-able. I wanted the Vex for weight. We already had a chassis together, so we're lucky we checked and discovered the AMs would've been too wide. We're just squeaking under width as is. And we were 120# at Dallas, so we didn't have weight either. Heh.

Sad to hear about the complication of a chain lift. It seemed like a good way to gain positive control of the crates. We're currently working on weight to add a clamping system on our internal elevator stacker so we can better control the totes and not have to worry about them flying out if we bump something.