pic: Team XBot Mecanum Practice Chassis

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Ben Piecuch

Beautiful moves! I can't wait to see what the drivers can do with some more practice. One question, any idea why it seems to be so noisy (in the video?) With your custom gearboxes I figured they would be nice and quiet. Or, are the AM Mecanums just that loud? (Sorry for the insinuation Andy/Mark...)

<offtopic>
Dave, it's about that time of the year when the real hints start coming our way. Is this your first "plant" here at the forums for us to deal with?
</offtopic>

Please keep us update with both your mechanical tuning and software tweaking (and methodology, if you will...) Thanks!

BEN

The first gearbox we assembled is markedly louder than the remaining three and it's also the one that's slowest to start, so we're going to tear it down and rebuild it. We think the first handful of shafts we made are inaccurate, so the gearbox isn't square and that's contributing to some binding. The chain is also a bit loose and I screwed up the tensioning mechanism some, so that'll be fixed in the next iteration -- whenever there's time for that.

The wheels, even on carpet, are a bit bumpy because the roller profile only approximates an elliptical shape. More weight may sink the chassis deeper into the carpet and alleviate some of the uneven ride; but that's also contributing to some of the noise you hear. Right now, sans battery, I'd say it weighs about 50 pounds. We'll get an accurate measurement of that tomorrow, we hope.

Edit: There's also no grease in the gears. We need to fix that, too.