21-01-2004 22:56

JVN

Re: White Paper Discuss: JVN's FIRST Mechanical Design Calculator

Hey Guys,
This paper has been a long time in the making. I finally got a version I'm somewhat happy with, so I posted it.

It is designed to aid in mechanical design, and modeling of mechanical systems for a FIRST robot.

You can do some pretty cool stuff. There is a lot of versatility there, and while it may seem overwhelming at first, I've tried to make it as straightforward as possible.

Post any comments you have, or suggestions for the future.

John

PS - I've been using it to design/model and generate graphs for my current robot. It's been beneficial in showing the team how things will perform without building them. It also helps me greatly during the design/tweak stage.

22-01-2004 13:47

ngreen

Re: White Paper Discuss: JVN's FIRST Mechanical Design Calculator

These are pretty great. I'll have to show them to my team and play with them some more. I love it when I find people who have more time than I do. The capabilities of this are pretty amazing. Good Job.

22-01-2004 14:03

Matt Adams

Re: White Paper Discuss: JVN's FIRST Mechanical Design Calculator

You want to see this!

This is a really wonderful tool that John has put a lot of time into. This gives you all then information you'd like to know (probably MORE than you'd like to know!)

As a note... this isn't just a magic spreadsheet that makes pretty graphs, this is a powerful tool. You'll honestly need to sit down with it for about an hour before you really begin to understand the depth of what's available. It'll take a lot of the mystery out of motor selection if you have the right data in front of you.

I especially enjoy the part about combining different types of motors. Though there was a big discussion about this prior to the build season, sometimes seeing how the numbers fluctuate is best. This can also help out with designing a good transmission.

This is a powerful tool that is geared towards the engineers and other knowledgable participants to aid them in the design process, I strong suggest you take a look at it and see how its numbers compare with your own.

Great job, John.

Matt

30-01-2004 12:14

Eric O

Re: White Paper Discuss: JVN's FIRST Mechanical Design Calculator

Anyone who hasn't taken a look at the spreadsheet definitely should. I would imagine that most people have most of their design done, but this tool is definitely worth downloading it to check all your numbers and saving for it next year. If you learn it well enough you can use it to calculate all of you motor gearing for every motor on your robot. 229 used it to run all of its motor calculations this year. So if you see our motors failing you may want to just drag that file to the recycling bin. Just remember that it is just a tool (a very good one at that) and there are no guarantees for the results of your robot.

Eric

hrmm...looks like someone forgot to take out some numbers

02-03-2004 15:58

JVN

2 shameless plugs in one...

If you are interested at the versatility of this whitepaper, you can check this out:

http://www.team229.org/resources/single/142

These are (some of) the calculations we ran when designing 229's 2004 robot.
You can see the major calcs that went into our Chip only drive (one of SEVERAL different options) our drill shoulder joint, our 2 globe extendo, and our van door claw.

The potential of this spreadsheet continues to amaze me.
Check it out.

John

04-04-2004 23:26

JVN

Re: White Paper Discuss: JVN's FIRST Mechanical Design Calculator

New use for www.chiefdelphi.com
Online archive for your important files.

My computer died a few weeks ago. Yesterday I needed to do some drivetrain calculations (sometimes... I just need to... it's a personal problem, I know).

So... I had to download my own whitepaper.
How humiliating.

Advice to everyone out there:
If you have an important file. Just turn it into a whitepaper.

John

24-12-2007 06:21

Tottanka

Re: White Paper Discuss: JVN's FIRST Mechanical Design Calculator

Quote:

Originally Posted by JVN New use for www.chiefdelphi.com Online archive for your important files. My computer died a few weeks ago. Yesterday I needed to do some drivetrain calculations (sometimes... I just need to... it's a personal problem, I know). So... I had to download my own whitepaper. How humiliating. Advice to everyone out there: If you have an important file. Just turn it into a whitepaper. John

24-12-2007 09:53

Joe Ross

Re: White Paper Discuss: JVN's FIRST Mechanical Design Calculator

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tottanka i seem to be unable to download this file,Anybody else having the same problem

24-12-2007 13:43

Cory

Re: White Paper Discuss: JVN's FIRST Mechanical Design Calculator

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tottanka i seem to be unable to download this file,Anybody else having the same problem

24-12-2007 17:14

Tottanka

Re: White Paper Discuss: JVN's FIRST Mechanical Design Calculator

ok i got it.

Explorer just ahd a problem, with firefox it's all good...

01-01-2008 15:22

Cory

Re: White Paper Discuss: JVN's FIRST Mechanical Design Calculator

Check out the updated 2008 version here