Our team is planning to use swerves this year, but since we use swerve for the first time, we don’t know much about them.
We made some CAD data of drive base using swerves.
Can you give me some advice if there are any structural problems ?
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8020 seems to be way overkill, is there a reason you aren’t using 2x1" or 2x2" tubing?
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Having a good bit of experience with 80/20, I’ll say that this base looks like it will be very prone to being warped or broken by impact. You have only the t-nuts holding the swerve units in place, which are likely to not be sufficient. You need some kind of more robust connection between the frame elements (through bolts, actually connecting the 80/20 at the corners with bolts or brackets, etc.) Otherwise, the first good defensive hit or fall you take will do damage to this frame.
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Knowing that 2x1 is probably pretty difficult to get based on your location, I’d be thinking a few things:
- If you can find 50x25 rectangular aluminum tube, that is likely an acceptable substitute if you have the capabilities to drill holes, et cetera
- If you need to do extrusion (what you’re doing now), I would extend them out so that you’re getting a butt joint with them. If you can use extrusion anchors to tie it together, that would probably help a lot. Right now you’re relying entirely on the swerve module and your gusset, which may or may not be fine.
You’re also probably going to get a lot of structural benefit from whatever you’re mounting up top.
Ultimately I’m not sure what your constraints are— what are your team’s machining constraints? What types of machines do you have access to? What is motivating your use of extrusion? Do you have viable alternatives?
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I’m not a builder so I can’t help you with the structure, but here are some bits about electrical :
- zip tie your wires EXTREMELY securely. the gears on the modules shred CAN wire (and most other small wires) with ease
- Keep the 12V power wires away from the CANcoders - Magnetic interference is possible
We have access to almost all machines.
But we don’t have our own CNC, so we’re gonna borrow it from a company.
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You need to be 110% sure that you will have access for as long as you need, when you need it. This should include time to iterate the parts and make a second and/or third revision of some parts. You have a very hard deadline since your one competition is a long flight away, in another country. It will be difficult for other teams to help you if you arrive at your competition with a partially completed robot that depends on parts made on CNC equipment.
The vast majority of teams should build a swerve drive in the offseason their first time, rather than the first time being during the season. It’s a huge increase in engineering effort, and it isn’t wise to hinge a season on completing it.
Also, just speculation, but swerve may not be viable (or advisable) this year, depending on the game. Keep other options in mind.
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