My team is making a new battery box. I was if teams would mind posting pictures of there battery box for inspiration or tips for a great battery box
This year we found that the front and rear pieces of the Andymark AM14U3 frame slide around a batter perfectly. We sandwiched it longways, and through friction and gravity, had our best battery holder to date. Not exactly a primary choice, but if you have an old frame lying around, try it out!
Ours is 2 three bank chargers on top of a wooden structure, which holds 6 batteries in at an angle so they don’t fall out. The plugs are distributed such that the plug for a given slot will line up with the indicator light on the charger - very useful when swapping batteries. It sits on a handcart for easy transport.
Best picture I can find of it is this one.
Hi my name is jaleel from frc 4592 and we actually used the battery wooden box until we designed a battery cart. If you our cad we have at our team website[https://www.google.com/search?q=team+4592&safe=strict&rlz=1C1KMZB_enUS568US568&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2oNDBkLnUAhVDYiYKHX14CwcQ_AUICygC&biw=1920]("http://www.m3robo.com/ [IMG)
Do you mean a battery box for use on the competition robot or a battery cart that transports or holds a number of batteries?
Here’s ours. We have 10 battery slots and use the standard 3 battery charger from AndyMark. There are wheels on the back to allow it to be rolled around into vehicles and through pits during setup. This also allows it to be used as a makeshift cart for totes and structural elements that can’t go on the robot cart or a furniture dolly.
(As a bonus, you can also see our tagging system to indicate if a battery is charged or not using these with electrical tape on them. If the tape is backwards from the wire color, it’s not charged. AndyMark recommends a different way, but this makes sure the flags are all in one place and makes it somewhat more clear.)
We made a wooden battery cart, for the same reason that we always use a plastic non-conductive belly pan. If you design with materials that make a potential problem impossible, you’ve solved a problem ahead of time. It’s hard to ever have a short to a frame if your electrical is attached to a non-conductive surface.
In addition, we added a small area on the back of the cart that has 6 usb cables to charge phones. It seems like people always want to put them near the easiest place to plug in, which is the work bench. That’s the worst place to have phones.
I’ll take photos of ours for you tomorrow. It is awesome. We designed ours to be modular and fit on a dolly. It consists of 4- 3 bay sections that stack and latch onto each other, that way they are easy to fit in a car and carry to demos.
Team 226 built 2 of these battery carts in 2015. They were refined and modeled after FRC Team 33 Killerbee’s battery cart. Each cart holds 7 batteries and has a handy storage compartment at the top. The bottom right yellow container houses a 6’ retractable extension cord. Of course, it has back lit LED lights. These carts are invaluable for transporting our batteries.
- John
Our battery cart is very similar and also modeled after 33. Although ours is wood and doesn’t have the cool LED’s…
thanks for all the idea and post. I appreciate it.
So if you could add one feature to your battery box what would it be?
We found that the Vex Drive in a Day battery box works really well. We like the ability to ratchet strap the battery in place.
This isn’t a great picture, but it shows our old and new battery carts side by side:
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/img/29b/29b08e05767c3282b60dc3f11c587f99_m.jpg
We learned a lot from the wooden one. The new one can hold 12 batteries and charge 6. The wiring is mostly hidden, and we have connectors mounted to the frame to plug batteries into, which cuts down on the cable spaghetti. When it’s standing up, it has a narrower footprint and can sit in a corner of the pit. The dolly it’s mounted to can flip down and roll like a cart, which lets us stack other stuff on top of it during load-in. The big pneumatic tires are really helpful when they’re inflated.
Improvements to it would be:
-Make it lighter. This thing’s a beast to haul around.
-Make the battery doors easier to deal with. They’re nice for keeping batteries in during transit, but they’re all either too snug, too loose, or missing.
-Add a surface. The clipboard we use for battery logging floats around and likes to hide, so a designated, built-in spot for it would be great.
-Add a built-in rack of outlets, ideally including some USB ports for charging phones.
I would use a charger that can charge all of the batteries at once, since it’s easy to fall behind at competition. Other that that, it does what it needs to pretty well.
I would add 2 small wheels in the front. In its current design using 2 large wheels, it is very heavy for a person to carry the entire assembly balancing on 2 wheels. Having 4 wheels will make the cart much easier to pull or push.
- John
For the battery box on your robot - these work ridiculously well.
We have used these the last two seasons (when climbing can put your robot through some fun physic exercises that you didn’t expect). We have never lost a battery when using these.
Sorry it took me so long to do this. Here is the link to a couple photos of ours. It’s slick, everyone who sees it like s it. It’s really easy to move around and load into vehicles.