Any Dewalts Trannies at the Philly and Chesapeake Regional?

FIRST General Forum
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Hopefully most faithful readers of these fora have read Joe P’s great white paper about using Dewalt XRP transmission* on FIRST robots.

I love the XRP transmissions. They are hard to beat in just so many ways.

I am dying to get the Dewalt folks onboard** But I have not been able to break through to the right person at Black & Decker (the folks that own the Dewalt brand). I am pretty sure that if we get to the right person, we can get them to help FIRST out.

That is where the Philly and Chesapeake Regionals can perhaps play a role.

Black & Decker’s HQ is not too far from the Philly Regional (google maps says 2 hours) and the Chesapeake Regional (google maps says under 1 hour)

When I take my next shot at contacting Black & Decker, I want to be able to tell them, “A bunch of FIRST folks are using your transmissions on their robots. If you want to see for yourselves, head on over the Philly or Chesapeake Regional and look at robots X, Y, & Z” Once we get them to a regional and they see those beautiful yellow XRP’s on the FIRST field, I am sure we’ll have them hooked…

…but I don’t know if any of the teams going to these regionals ARE using the Dewalt XRP trannies.

So… …your mission should you choose to accept it, is to PM me if you (or any robots you know of) are going to either of these two regionals and are using the Dewalt XRP transmissions.

Thanks,
Joe J.

*By the way, Joe P is working to publish an updated version of the paper so if you have suggestions for improvements to the paper or if you have made use of the XRP transmissions in other ways, please please please share your ideas with Joe P and me so that we can get them out to the FIRST world. Already we have some small improvements to the standard instructions, a Joe P’s 2 CIM motor adaptation, Team Buzz’s (#175’s) changes to the 1 CIM motor method, and (if I can twist his arm just a bit harder) Artur Ostrowski’s 4 wheel independent steer swerve with 1 CIM per wheel AND shifting.

**perhaps getting them to donate XRP parts to the FIRST kit or to give FIRST Teams a discount or to sell a special FIRST Robotics Care Package with all the needed stuff inside or whatever.

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Hi Joe,

Just to let you know that Buzz (#175) will be at the Chesapeake Regional. We will have both DeWalt’s and Banebots on the robot, and think we have the carrier plate problem solved. We used the hardened plates, removed the short pins, re-drilled and reamed (.001 interference fit with loctite) new holes in between the existing holes, and ground off the excess after pressing them in to the right height. This removes the lead chamfer and gives maximum contact in the hole. We used 4mm x 16 mm hardened dowel pins which we got at Atlantic Fastener in West Springfield, Ma @ $0.31 each. Took a couple of hours to set up and do 2 plates. We are presently running the original plates, and will look for excessive backlash in the driveline to decide whether to put the new plates in at Chesapeake Regional. By the way, the DeWalt’s are shifted, and our primary drive. We use the Banebots for a lateral drive, which is used intermittently, but very strong defensively.:slight_smile:

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hey joe we’ll be at midwest next weekend with our dewalt coaxial swerve drive if thats worth anything?