I’ve looked at a few different ways of mounting batteries at comps and on Cheif Delphi but was wondering why people mount there batteries certain ways. (If you can or would like to explain what your team does and why that is always appreciated. ) Our main team goal this year was to have an extremely low CG and part of that means including a low mounting option for our battery while keeping it accessible for our team to where we can grab and go with our battery.
Side note - Has anyone tried a hinge type design at all with this at all as well? Something that sits upright for accessibility but then hinges down for CG purposes? Myself and some other FRC people have been looking into it and wondering if others have as well-
I have a basic sketch I’m throwing underneath this. The darker Gray is our frame, and they very light gray is just a pan we have under our robot. The black squiggle lines are just a thick polycarb or protective sheet to help hold the battery and the yellow Squiggle would be a strap to hold the battery. The connections (Power and Ground terminals) would come out of the opening on the right where there isn’t a guard/holding wall.
If you have cool ways to mount a battery with a low CG with good access or just want to share something about it or improvements to any aspect of the base design I drew-up please by all means show me! I am looking for as much feedback and ideas as possible so anything helps. Thank you all!
My team mounts our battery lying flat, centered between 2 swerve modules. We do this mainly for vertical clearance and decreased risk of “unscheduled battery removal”. The lower CG is nice, although imo it is not as impactful as many other design choices you can make (ex: my team made a steel bellypan for our offseason bot).
I would caution you to re-enforce your mounting; I have seen many straps rip and even metal shear from the inertia of the battery. I worry that polycarb on 2 sides and just a strap on the third will send your battery either: A) out of your robot, disabling you for the match, or B) into your eboard, destroying (or at least damaging) expensive components as it crashes around and likely disabling multiple matches.
Additionally, centering it between module 1 and 2 could help balance your robot as you rotate with swerve (although this is a bit more of a guess).
My team has our battery sandwiched between extrudes with aluminum brackets that help retain it with 3dp (usually Onyx) spacers between that we mount our breaker to some years. We have slots in these plates that we put a strap (usually velcro) through. I would also recommend some gaps on at least one side of the battery to make taking it out easier by letting you grab under it.
Some screenshots from our WIP CAD to help illustrate:
Thank you for the help! I 100% agree on the unscheduled battery removal part . For the CG we already use a steel bellypan on our robot last year and plan on doing the same thing this year for CG but having the battery flat is just something extra. Even with a Steel bellypan last year our robot was a bit top heavy (our 2023 robot is my profile picture) and that definitely had to do with our design most of all but having some extra piece of mind doesn’t hurt. At the very least it helps my nerves with it .
If I were to make a full design of it I would reinforce it more for sure. Looking back using thicker Polycarb is probably not the best idea but If I were to make it with Aluminum I would make some pieces that look like this or make something similar to it:
We usually don’t have a support beam in the center of our robot because we machine our own frame rails from thick Aluminum and haven’t had an issue with them bending or breaking once so having that rail in there doesn’t give us a ton of use. Also because we have one of our sponsors laser cut out our steel bellypan be could make gaps on the sides of where the battery is placed.
I originally put the Battery over towards one swerve module simply because it makes more space open on another side but on second thought that would be putting a lot more pressure on one module and just doesn’t make sense so putting it between two modules is probably better- Thank you for bringing that up. That makes a lot of sense.
Thanks again for the help and all the notes and things for me to think about. Good luck with the rest of the season!
) Our main team goal this year was to have an extremely low CG and part of that means including a low mounting option for our battery while keeping it accessible for our team to where we can grab and go with our battery.
. For the CG we already use a steel bellypan on our robot last year and plan on doing the same thing this year for CG but having the battery flat is just something extra. Even with a Steel bellypan last year our robot was a bit top heavy (our 2023 robot is my profile picture) and that definitely had to do with our design most of all but having some extra piece of mind doesn’t hurt. At the very least it helps my nerves with it 