KOP transmissions: Your turn.

[chris31]

The 05-06 season was my first year and I didnt work on mechanical but we never had any issues with them and they worked great. If they still sold them I would definitely pick a few.

[dtengineering]

There are some excellent papers on transmission designs in the White Papers here on CD. Teams have been very generous in sharing their ideas.

Perhaps one of the things that would be most helpful to teams wanting to build a transmission -- either based on one of these designs or a new one as proposed -- would be a list of components hyperlinked to on-line suppliers. One of the real tricks to building a competitive robot is knowing what parts are available, how much they cost, what their strengths and weaknesses are and where to get them from.

That said, there is still room for innovation and collaboration. An arm transmission integrated with a sensor and PID feedback loop to hold position would be helpful to many teams, I think.

As for the Banebots trannies, yes, there was a lot of concern about them before they received the carrier plate upgrades. Since then they have been at least as reliable as any other transmission. They are ideally suited for direct drive applications, which allows teams to do away with heavy and unreliable drive chains, and are very well designed for adding a very functionional optical encoder for speed and distance measurements.

Jason

P.S. Of course just because there is are existing solutions to a problem does not mean there aren't better ones.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

P.S. Of course just because there is are existing solutions to a problem does not mean there aren't better ones.

My boss once told me "There is all ways a better solution; Good engineers just know when to stop".

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

My boss once told me "There is all ways a better solution; Good engineers just know when to stop".

This maxim is often stated differently: "Better is the enemy of good enough."

[Cory]

Originally Posted by 114ManualLabor

Talking about transmissions you could buy wasn't really the point, or I might have titled the thread "Best store-bought alternatives to the KOP transmissions."

Right... but why would you spend your time to design/fabricate something when you could purchase a equal/superior offering that costs significantly less than it would take for you to make the same thing, if you price out materials, machine, and design time.

This is particularly true since the KOP transmissions are primarily used by teams who a) don't have the resources to make their own custom drive system, or b) use it because they want something that will run in a day or two out of the box.

In both instances, a custom designed transmission that the plans are available is not desirable. Team A cannot make one, because they do not have the resources to do so. Team B will not make one, because it will divert their efforts from their subsystems.

In either case, my answer remains the same. For a single speed kitbot drive, I highly, highly doubt you could possibly find a more economical solution than the AM single speed. Consider that in the Bay Area, a machine shop will charge you between $100-120 an hour to make parts for you. It would take at least 10-15 hours to machine two transmissions. Possibly more. That's $1500. Materials are probably another $100 or so. The kicker is that if you for some reason did want to make one yourself, just download the CAD files from Andymark and machine the parts yourself.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Cory

This is particularly true since the KOP transmissions are primarily used by teams who a) don't have the resources to make their own custom drive system, or b) use it because they want something that will run in a day or two out of the box.

Or how about c) decide that the KOP tranny is the best one for their application? At least one of the 2005 champions decided that the kit trannies would provide what they wanted (strong, cheap, good gear ratio, easy maintenance) and went for it. Then in 2007, they decided to use an AndyMark 2-speed for the same reason--they knew it would provide what they wanted.