Newly Developed Chassis

[sprocketeater]

Hi everyone,

Team 418 and team coach Tony Bertucci have been hard at work returning to our roots, and we've designed an improved (simple, lighter, and more robust) chassis for the '09 season!

Without further ado, here are some specs:
-6 wheel drive, lowered center wheels
-7 pounds, 16 ounces (9 pounds lighter than our chassis for Overdrive)
-#25 chain runs from the center wheel to the front and back wheels
-It currently has kitbot wheels, but those can be modified
-Chain tensioners built-in
-Supports the weight of various team members

For comparison, here's a picture of this year's robot:
ZePHyr
and...
Pictures of the new one(they're a little grainy since they're cell phone images, but this is still a work in progress; I'll post better ones once it's done):
Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3

Feel free to ask questions/voice opinions/concerns.

[Billfred]

Wood Coast Drive?

I dig it!

[cardinalman86]

that is pretty amazing!!!

[Akash Rastogi]

It looks really beautiful as well. Awesome.

[Lowfategg]

That is really cool! How do you think the wood is going to survive impacts by other robots? I can just picture it snapping.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Lowfategg

That is really cool! How do you think the wood is going to survive impacts by other robots? I can just picture it snapping.

You could always make it out of the strongest wood in the world.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

Very nice. I <3 wood

I might suggest wrapping it in fiberglass. Done correctly, it will remain light and the beautiful wood will remain visible. Fiberglass will dramatically improve the flexibility (wood usually cracks instead of flexing) allowing it to survive most impacts.

I'm also not crazy about single motor drives. We tried one motor per side this year and we lost a LOT of acceleration. Maneuverability and speed will be improved with two additional motors.

[s_forbes]

Very nice! It's great to see creative designs that use materials in clever ways.

I don't know about the strength of wood as compaired to something like aluminum 1/8" box extrusion that everyone uses, but I'd guess that it's a better material for the base frame. Wood has the wonderful property that it doesn't get dented if you hit it really hard; it flexes and then returns to it's original shape. It makes sense to me to use something like wood for the drivebase, which gets beaten around a lot during competition.

That's why we use fiberglass extrusion; it can take a beating and won't get bent!

[MrForbes]

Very nice! I'd suggest making the front and rear crossmembers go past the wheels, so you can attach bumpers to them, and add blocks between the wheels to support the middles of the side bumpers.



shows kind of what I mean...although we added a vertical piece of 1/8" x 1-1/2" alumimum angle at each corner later to support the ends of the side bumpers.

Also I am not a big fan of using a single material for the entire robot, it seems to me that it's wise to select the best material for each part (within the constraints of your fabrication abilities and budget).

[sprocketeater]

Thanks everyone-

Our plan for this version of the chassis is actually to make it a test "mule" for our electronics team and to allow our drivers some practice. Our coach decided to surprise the team with this chassis after jests from a couple team members that there was no way he could build a wooden frame that could stand up to the beatings of other robots. At first, many thought he was building a rocking chair...

As for the single motor on each side, we just went with what we had available-all of our CIMs and dewalt transmissions are currently on our other robots, so we just used our fisher-price motors from previous seasons.
Glad to see that you like the woodwork, though-I'll pass it along to our coach.

[Gboehm]

You need to get Woody to sign it!

I agree with glassing it though, that is a really slick look. It looks pretty strong, amd with bumbers it wouldnt be much of an issue at all. Now I want to see a bamboo robot...

[roboticWanderor]

Oh man, you shoulda seen the look on my face when i first saw my coach walk in the door with this thing! ridiculous!
It is incredibly strong; made from red oak and with some neat joinery. I actually took a sick of the scrap left over, approx 1" square, and did a little stress test with a hammer, comparing it to some 1" box alum. this stuff is strong! it withstood 3 smashes with the sledge before snapping, while the aluminum didn't even survive the first blow!. I'm a believer

another feature is that it is incredibly lightweight, somewhere around 8 lbs for the base frame itself (not including wheels axles etc.)

i think this thing will qualify as an antique in 50 years, assuming it lasts that long.

ps: don't tell my team, but i want to put a steam engine on this thing and turn it into the worlds first Steampunk FIRST bot...

[seanl]

Originally Posted by Gboehm

You need to get Woody to sign it!

I agree with glassing it though, that is a really slick look. It looks pretty strong, amd with bumbers it wouldnt be much of an issue at all. Now I want to see a bamboo robot...

there is one team in LA that make a robot out of bamboo.. their team name was the bambots i think. ill see if i can find a pic.

heres their team profile on tba there are a few vids of the bot:http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv...=848&year=2008

[roboticWanderor]

loading photo ...

[Lil' Lavery]

Wasn't there already a thread about this?