Just a bit of advice to any and all teams using this year’s Toughbox from the kit.
Make extra sure you don’t over-tighten the four bolts that bind the box together. It’s really easy to bend the plexiglass plate. A couple younger members already permanently warped ours. Although, I’m kinda glad they did, because if they warp that easily, I’d rather not have them on the robot.
We’re going to have some identical plates made out of aluminum. I’m sure many teams have already realized this, but I figured I’d bring it up anyway.
Our plastic plate actually seems to have developed some hairline cracks surrounding the CIM mounting screw holes, so that’s something to watch out for too. Another reason that an aluminum replacement might be good.
Remember, DO NOT use regular Loctite on anything that may come in contact with Lexan (polycarbonate).
Loctite causes a reaction/dissolves the polycarbonate, which makes it brittle and very prone to cracking and shattering.
The entire polycarbonate plate is needed, because it holds the bearings and supports the shafts. However, you can use the aluminum spacers in the link you provided in place of the extruded aluminum box around the transmission.
On a similar note, can anyone do me a big favor by e-mailing me the Autodesk schematic drawing of that plate, so we can send that to the shop guy? We’ve yet to set up Autodesk on any of our machines and we can’t get ahold of the one who owns the FIRSTBase manager account, so we can’t get it ourselves right now.
You can download an *.stp of the gearbox from AndyMark. You could also just make a new model of it from the drawings at AndyMark; it isn’t a very complicated part.
I know I can download it from the website. We don’t have the Autodesk software setup and it’s going to be a while before we can. If I could do it myself, I would.