What COTS parts would you like to see?

[OccamzRazor]

I second what Sperkowsky said about the metal versaplanetary adapter and gussets. If it was metal it could be a lot smaller.

I would also like to see the versaplanetary encoder housing be made out of the same metal as the gearboxes because we had two of the plastic ones create a failure where once the encoder cracked and failed the entire gearbox would fall to pieces in our robot. The bolts failed in double shear and we had three pieces of each bolt every time this happened on two different gearboxes. I will attach photos to show the failure. I think we already sent this to Vex but I will check on that. I think vibration was the cause of the failure and not overloading based on our applications.

I also strongly agree with what Marshall said and will add a little on to that. If the AndyMark kit came with bumper instructions and sheet metal hardware for next year I feel like some of the teams with fewer resources in NC would actually arrive to competition with bumpers and I would not have to help them build the bumpers before inspection! It would be nice to have something sort of like an "add plywood, noodle, and cloth kit" and you have a robot ready for inspection.

[s_forbes]

The COTs parts available through Vexpro, AndyMark, and McMaster made all of our design work very easy. I'm glad we have so many parts available now compared to years ago!

One part we end up making a lot of, and isn't easy to do if you are a low resource team with no mill/lathe, is spacer inserts for tubes. These let you do through-bolt connections that can be tightened without crushing the tube, so you actually have a strong bolted joint. For VexPro in particular, spacers like this that fit their Versaframe extrusion sizes could be very useful for some teams.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by s_forbes

The COTs parts available through Vexpro, AndyMark, and McMaster made all of our design work very easy. I'm glad we have so many parts available now compared to years ago!

One part we end up making a lot of, and isn't easy to do if you are a low resource team with no mill/lathe, is spacer inserts for tubes. These let you do through-bolt connections that can be tightened without crushing the tube, so you actually have a strong bolted joint. For VexPro in particular, spacers like this that fit their Versaframe extrusion sizes could be very useful for some teams.

+1

[BoilerMentor]

Originally Posted by s_forbes

The COTs parts available through Vexpro, AndyMark, and McMaster made all of our design work very easy. I'm glad we have so many parts available now compared to years ago!

One part we end up making a lot of, and isn't easy to do if you are a low resource team with no mill/lathe, is spacer inserts for tubes. These let you do through-bolt connections that can be tightened without crushing the tube, so you actually have a strong bolted joint. For VexPro in particular, spacers like this that fit their Versaframe extrusion sizes could be very useful for some teams.

In years past where crushing box was an issue, we would rip down a piece of scrap hardwood on a table saw to fit snugly within a tube and just use that. Does exactly what you're after and would be way easier to position and use than a round spacer. I can see positioning one of those little round spacers and lining it up with the bolt holes being a royal pain, especially if it's deep in a tube that's already attached to the robot.

[Ryan_Todd]

Originally Posted by s_forbes

...spacer inserts for tubes. These let you do through-bolt connections that can be tightened without crushing the tube, so you actually have a strong bolted joint. For VexPro in particular, spacers like this that fit their Versaframe extrusion sizes could be very useful for some teams.

+1 million on this one.

In recent years, we usually end up 3D printing all of our anti-crush supports, or else making do with lots of little cut-to-length tube spacers. With the first option, we waste time redesigning and printing the custom support blocks every year; with the second option, we waste time fumbling with (and dropping, losing, and needing to cut replacements for) dozens of tiny round spacers during assembly and maintenance operations.

Standard anti-crush supports that fit inside the VersaFrame extrusions, on the other hand, should be fairly cost-effective if injection-molded en masse!

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by Billfred

How would different colors fix anything? Unless you had to boost the pre-color production to meet a MOQ, that doesn't change the quantity available (and even then, it creates more SKUs for vendors to have to pore over).

Cause some people are OCD enough to not buy some things because they want things to match.

[adciv]

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

Cause some people are OCD enough to not buy some things because they want things to match.

Actually, we're CDO. The letters are alphabetized as they're supposed to be.

[Chris is me]

One more thing I thought of: A VP 1:1 stage. Yeah I know you can directly hook the gearbox up to achieve this, but I'm talking about something you can drop in to replace an existing stage. Sometimes you go from 2 reductions to 1 reduction, but you want to use the same mounting holes, and a 1:1 spacer stage would be good for this. Using an encoder stage for this gets pricey.

I was wondering how long it was going to take before someone got around to this. It's unreasonable and somewhat silly to try and turn a VP into a low RPM high torque wervo. They aren't reqlly designed for that.

They definitely are! The BAG motor with a 100:1 reduction is awfully reminiscent of the old Globe motors that used to be in the kit. They can handle the torque.

[happyWobot]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

They definitely are! The BAG motor with a 100:1 reduction is awfully reminiscent of the old Globe motors that used to be in the kit. They can handle the torque.

Never said you can't use a VP or configure it to do servo tasks. But a two stage VP and Bag motor is unreasonably long and still only gets you to 140rpm. What if you want 15-40 rpms? I have to attach a mini-cim to a 100:1 config just to get it to 62rpm at full power. For a simple high power/ low rpm servo, thats just an unreasonably heavy config and in most cases its unmountable if your trying to use it to drive an elbow on a multistage arm. A highly compact high torque, non-pneumatic, low rpm servo is sorely missing in the FRC toolkit. Window motors are highly underutilized for this task because there is no standardized means to connect it to other things with reliability.

BTW, the single stage 1:1 is a great idea. We ran into the same issue needing to refab the mount in order to convert from 1:1 to 4: 1. The same thought occurred to me. Why wasnt there an internal extension to enable 1:1 in a single stage case.

[jwfoss]

Some offseason designs, and our limited in house capabilities leave us wishing for 1/2" hex stock with a pilot bore (aka Thunderhex minus the rounded corners).

[Max Boord]

Originally Posted by jwfoss

Some offseason designs, and our limited in house capabilities leave us wishing for 1/2" hex stock with a pilot bore (aka Thunderhex minus the rounded corners).

Can you provide an example where the rounded corners make thunderhex shaft inferrior to regular hex shaft? Also thunderhex bearings alone should be enough of a reason to use thunderhex over Regular hex.

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by Max Boord

Can you provide an example where the rounded corners make thunderhex shaft inferrior to regular hex shaft? Also thunderhex bearings alone should be enough of a reason to use thunderhex over Regular hex.

We had a small issue this year. We were using the cheap-o plastic Vex hubs with thunderhex shafts in the front and back (6-wheel drive, center wheel had regular hex). We had 8" pneumatic wheels on a 16:1 ratio. We noticed the thunderhex shaft was rounding out the hubs. I think it was a combination of the plastic hubs, thunderhex, and high torque at the wheel axles. We took care of the problem by switching to the aluminum hubs and regular hex and saw no more problems. I couldn't tell you which one solved the problem, whether we would have had the same issues with regular hex with the plastic bores (possible) or the thunderhex with aluminum hubs (not likely).

The problem was not strictly with the thunderhex shaft, but in that particular application, using regular hex shaft would have possibly not worn out the plastic hubs (or at least would have delayed the problem).

[Knufire]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

We had a small issue this year. We were using the cheap-o plastic Vex hubs with thunderhex shafts in the front and back (6-wheel drive, center wheel had regular hex). We had 8" pneumatic wheels on a 16:1 ratio. We noticed the thunderhex shaft was rounding out the hubs. I think it was a combination of the plastic hubs, thunderhex, and high torque at the wheel axles. We took care of the problem by switching to the aluminum hubs and regular hex and saw no more problems. I couldn't tell you which one solved the problem, whether we would have had the same issues with regular hex with the plastic bores (possible) or the thunderhex with aluminum hubs (not likely).

The problem was not strictly with the thunderhex shaft, but in that particular application, using regular hex shaft would have possibly not worn out the plastic hubs (or at least would have delayed the problem).

I think the official VEX recommendation is using a metal hub on one side (to transmit the torque) and a plastic on the other side to support the wheel.

[Michael Hill]

Basically a plastic version of this: http://www.competitionrobotparts.com...oller-end-cap/ with a 1.125" OD.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

Basically a plastic version of this: http://www.competitionrobotparts.com...oller-end-cap/ with a 1.125" OD.

http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-1305.htm