pic: CVT drivetrain

[Cory]

The big problem with CVT's made for FIRST is that they're horribly inefficient, and fairly complex.

I'm not sure you'd even have a reason to make one, rather than just making a auto shifting 4 speed like 33 did, other than for the coolness factor.

[ahecht]

^It's all about bragging rights, awards, and pushing the envelope, not necessarily winning or practicality.

[Madison]

What is it about inefficient design and operation that either pushes the envelope or deserves to be awarded?

[jgannon]

Originally Posted by M. Krass

What is it about inefficient design and operation that either pushes the envelope or deserves to be awarded?

If it wasn't for all of the green bars by your name, I'd have disregarded this post as a troll. Rather, what we have here is a logical fallacy known as "begging the question"-- the premises for your claim entail your conclusion. What is the relative efficiency of a miniature CVT, compared to an Andymark transmission, or a 33 transmission? It's hard to say, because nobody has tried it.

A genuine CVT on a FIRST robot would be an innovation. Maybe it will turn out that the team who does it (next year, maybe?) would have been better off with an Andymark shifter. Obviously, then, the team shouldn't get an award. What a total waste of time.

NO!

While the CVT team is out getting pushed around, they say, "Hm. That didn't work as expected. How can we improve this design?" THAT'S what FIRST is about. I'd say that's worthy of an award. Or, on the other hand, maybe the CVT is reasonably efficient. Then we all have a new design to consider. I'd say that's worthy of an award.

Keep this in mind:

Originally Posted by mechanicalbrain

a CVT is hardly ineficient all it means is nobody has created an efficient one

How inefficient will the first FIRST CVT be? We don't know. In response to your question, inefficiency neither pushes the envelope, nor deserves to be rewarded. New approaches and inspiration do both. That's why I'm confident that whoever gets the first CVT on the playing field will gain acclaim here and with the judges, regardless of its efficiency.

</soapbox>

[Cory]

Originally Posted by jgannon

That's why I'm confident that whoever gets the first CVT on the playing field will gain acclaim here and with the judges, regardless of its efficiency.

Well... 190 made a toroidal CVT in 2002.

I think Maddie's point was that there's no sense in making (or being rewarded for) something that will perform poorly, because it is cool, instead of making something more traditional that will perform better

[jgannon]

Originally Posted by Cory

there's no sense in making (or being rewarded for) something that will perform poorly, because it is cool, instead of making something more traditional that will perform better

I'll concede that point. There's no sense in, say, making a drivetrain powered by one Globe motor. Would it be unique? Yes. Would it be cool? Sure. Would it perform well? It's safe to say no. However, I don't think it's fair to assert now that a CVT will perform poorly, particularly when only one design has been tested.

[alphastryk]

here is a non-friction-based CVT:

http://www.andersoncvt.com/device.wmv

i dont know if it is feasable to make this type of CVT, and you would have to ask this guy, because he has a patent on it, so...

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by alphastryk

here is a non-friction-based CVT:

http://www.andersoncvt.com/device.wmv

i dont know if it is feasable to make this type of CVT, and you would have to ask this guy, because he has a patent on it, so...

I've seen that before. To me, that still does not look like a positive engagement system.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Looks like some sort of quasi-positive engagement system. You're relying on the pins on the belt not to shear or skip instead of a belt not to slip. It's interesting, but I don't think his demo there was under any sort of load, so I'd question the actual performance of the design when you toss an engine and a load on it.

On a completely other topic, I agree whole-heartedly with M Krass that inefficient, poorly working designs are less deserving of awards. FIRST is an engineering competition. Atleast that's what I've always been told. Engineers often design cool, innovative devices, but they always strive to design something that works well, is efficient, and is cost-effective. In my opinion, a cool, innovative, expensive CVT that bleeds power is a poor engineering choice.

As an example, a team could come up with a thoroughly innovative and cool device for a robot that serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Heck, they could put a cold fusion generator on there to power some decorations. Do you want to give them an award for a really innovative, utterly useless device?

[mechanicalbrain]

I'm curious how many of you have heard of using magnetics to create a change in processing path on a processor. it works allot like a hard drive and was turned down in favor of our current method by silicon valley. now however its being taken up with fervor. why because unknown to everyone it allows a computer to instantly specialize itself in any process it needs to do by rewiring the paths of its own circuits. this is a very good example of how something automatically labeled as inefficient turned out to be superior. i see allot of people claiming this as inefficient but i spent almost three days learning and talking to people and its become obvious quite a few posts are based on no physical information further more instead of criticizing an idea why not try to give suggestions. this system has many benefits that i feel are simply being overlooked. the problem with most drive trains is that when you change gear you have to slow down. while you can do it at high speeds it literally shocks the transmission. (this is not something i want to see argument because i checked this with my dad who drag races and my moms friend who teaches racing) a CVT can make these changes on the fly and not suffer a RPM drop. yes these systems have drawbacks mostly endurance but they wont be on a large strain. i would like to point out FIRST is not about having well designed systems its about showing innovation. so i ask anyone posting from here on please show some innovation I'm really tired of seeing lots of post turning down an idea and few posts (thank you to the ones who do) that show thought into creating new or improved ideas. i know im going to get allot of fire for this but im just tired of seeing all hiss and no ideas (agian i thank those who prove to be the exception).

[santosh]

^agreed. I was just kinda curious. Is acceleration with a CVT competitive or any better than acceleration with say just a regular automatic transmission. I am not going to sit here and argue about the innovation and coolness or whatever about his design and whether or not a robot with it deservs an award, but I mean a CVT is just flat out awesome to me. How can you make something better if you never make it in the 1st place to develop it.
Here is a link that someone on my team found that has tons of differnt CVT's.
http://www.gizmology.net/cvt.htm

[mechanicalbrain]

see reading this message put a huge smile on my face. i was expecting people just showing anger at my post but was impressed by your post. i think that is truly the spirit of FIRST and i think your team is lucky to have someone who shows such great creative potential. by the way the link was great and very informative. by the way i would be interested in talking with you.

[ahecht]

Originally Posted by santosh

^agreed. I was just kinda curious. Is acceleration with a CVT competitive or any better than acceleration with say just a regular automatic transmission.

In theory, comparing a car with an automatic transmission to an identical car with a CVT, you should see a 25% improvement in acceleration with the CVT. In practice it is slightly lower, but that is mostly because CVTs are much less mature technology.

I can say that even with a manually shifted CVT, 190's 2002 robot had incredible acceleration. Once it was working properly, it was first to the goals almost every time.

[ahecht]

Originally Posted by jgannon

A genuine CVT on a FIRST robot would be an innovation. Maybe it will turn out that the team who does it (next year, maybe?) would have been better off with an Andymark shifter. Obviously, then, the team shouldn't get an award. What a total waste of time.

Keep this in mind:How inefficient will the first FIRST CVT be? We don't know. In response to your question, inefficiency neither pushes the envelope, nor deserves to be rewarded. New approaches and inspiration do both. That's why I'm confident that whoever gets the first CVT on the playing field will gain acclaim here and with the judges, regardless of its efficiency.

I will point out again here that 190 did use a true CVT (of the torroidal design shown here) on their 2002 robot. While I don't know the efficiency of the system, I can say that we never experienced any slippage (and all the rubbing parts were smooth cast iron, not rubber or wierd hybrid gear thingies). The rotation of the two idlers was controlled by a single motor, since they do not need to move independantly of each other.

Yes, the system was very noisy, and we didn't get the programming figured out until well into the 2003 season (you try programming a reliable PID controller in pBasic), but it did show promise, and I would hope that more teams would try ambitious projects such as this. It may take several generations before a radical design such as a CVT can show a clear competative advantage, but we will never find out if teams aren't willing to try.

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Cory

I'm not sure you'd even have a reason to make one, rather than just making a auto shifting 4 speed like 33 did, other than for the coolness factor.

I was talking with a team from Hawaii (368?) that made an autoshifting team 33 style 4 speed and they said as soon as it hit 2nd it went right to 3rd almost immediately after. So even 4 speeds is excessive for a traditional FIRST game.