Should be noted the image is missing 3 wheels.
Nice custom gearbox! Do you have both center wheels gear driven? How did that compare weight-wise to chain drive?
Hey former 3374 Alumni (Captain for 2011 season)! Chassis looks great, if Mr. Duquette and Mrs. Milburn are still around tell them Carter thinks they robot looks great, and hopes to see them at championships this year.
Mentor - 2036
It looks awesome, but I gotta ask how heavy is it?
Duquette is still the head mentor. Milburn left a few years ago to go be the principal over at Wilson Elementary, but she stops by every now and again!
Both of the center wheels are driven. Chained to the outside ones. The weight will be pretty evenly distributed once the manipulators are added.
Gearboxes are 14.6 lbs each. We’ll be heavy this year for sure.
Nice work. Looks super clean.
You guys were one of my favorite teams to play with at Utah 2011 and your growth since then is very impressive. Good luck this year!
Robots looks really good!
Reminds me of what we did last year. We had a 8 wheel drop center with the gearbox in the middle and chain driving the outer wheels. Be warned of those pinions. They like to become razors if they aren’t perfectly aligned (speaking from experience 
). Not as bad as breaking the size 25 chain after every match at a week 1 regional :yikes: .
Believe me, last year our pinion gears were nearly perfect circles after the championship.
PSA: Grease your gearboxes
Last year at the Central Illinois Regional, our inspector told us to cover our gearboxes as the shredding from the pinions spewed ships that got everywhere in our robot, especially the talons that happened to be on both sides of the gearbox’s.
PSA: Cover those pinioins
It also goes the other way that dirt, metal chips, and carpet fuzzes can get into the gearbox and cause it to lose efficiency or even bind. It also helps keep the grease from flying everywhere and keeps loose fingers away from pinch points. I always recommend teams to cover their gearbox.
Thanks for the advice. We will be sure to cover the gearboxes with something to protect them. Any advice on what to use? Tape, Acrylic, Sheetmetal or something else?
Wow, that chassis looks… riveting.
My team wraps a strip of duct tape around the outside of gearboxes that are exposed on the sides. That’s ,well, my team though…
How has riveted chassis held up in the past. We have a robot design that will be difficult to use a 10/32 and nyloc in many places. Till now for set up we tapped each hole but replacing with pop rivets maybe a good idea. If you need to disassemble do you just drill off the head?
This is actually our first year fully riveting the whole chassis. But if you drill the hole the right size it will hold up amazingly. And yes, if you want to disassemble just drill off the head.
At first I thought it was just scale and parallax at work, but on second look, the bearing holes on those outer tubes look much smaller than 1.25". Are those just pilot holes that will be taken to size later or do you guys use some other way of retaining those shafts?
EDIT - Also, are those 3x1" tubes? And what size are those rivets?
Based on my observations, it would appear as though they have another bearing on the inside of the channel there. The shaft would then continue to pass through the other side and a shaft collar mounted on the outside of the frame retaining the shaft. You can see this done on the inside of the far channel, with several shafts/shaft collars protruding.
Just my $0.02 though.
This is our (2386’s) second year doing a fully riveted chassis and have found it to be incredibly robust. In terms of taking it apart, we try designing it so we don’t need to. However if we did need to for some reason, it is indeed just drilling the head off. Also this year, to really hit home the idea of only assembling once and never disassembling it, we are using cleco fasteners. We can assemble and disassemble our chassis in minutes (albeit, temporarily) ensuring everything lines up and no modifications are needed before final assembly.
It is certainly 3x1 tubing.