Hi everyone,
this is a build thread to discuss team 2129 Ultraviolet’s 2023 robot Nessie! As a very basic overview, Nessie is a Swerve drive base with a 25in x 25in frame perimeter (26.5 with the bumper mounting rail). We used a custom gearbox to drive our double jointed arm, which is based on team 971’s arm from 2018. As our end defector, we built an intake similar to the everybot one but we improved on the design by removing one of the spinning elements and generally reducing complexity. We have no pneumatics on the robot and use only 11 total motors!
We have Swerve Drive Specialties MK4 Modules with the L1 gears which give us a lot of pushing power even though Nessie is only about 100lbs. Our biggest strength is our modularity. every single part of the robot is easily removeable for serviceability. for example, our arm is held on to the robot with 4 bolts and 4 pins and can be swapped for our spare arm in less than 15 minutes (if we hurry). We also use fully modular swerve drive so we can very easily remove the modules for repair or replacement. This year, we used a combination of Anderson Power pole connectors for power and DB15 connectors for CAN. This allowed us to have easily secured connectors that were still easy to remove when we needed too. Our swerve drive is Falcon 500 based and the arm and intake are driven by a combination of NEOs and NEO 550s. This thread is kind of an offshoot of another thread when I realized that people are very interested in our robot and especially the arm.
Here are some pictures:
Closeup view of the bottom of the gearbox IRL after an incident with the motor (see the previous thread). Shows how compact the gearbox is
Bottom view of our gearbox, showing the mounting of the gearbox
One of the side panels on our gearbox (both sides are the same)
Bottom view of our robot showing the mounting for the PDH. Everything was covered by polycarbonate covers to keep junk out.
Top view of the gearbox without the arm segments.
How we mounted our NEOs to the main gearbox
Combo picture of Nessie (Right) and our offseason robot, Monch (Left)