Great way to cool the motors between matches!
Can I have the CAD for this?
Yes, we were at Buckeye so just now getting back to messages. I can share as a STEP assembly?
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The best looking cart is from 4451 Robotz Garage in SC. It has Dean and Woodie painted at the side door windows and signed by both of them personally as well. The back T handle steers the front wheels.
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We’re looking at updating our cart and I’m interested in using a Gorilla Cart as the running gear. How do you deal with not having wheel brakes to park the thing and it not roll off?
Typical Gorilla rolling cabinets won’t handle the rigors of robot transport unless you beef up the base and casters considerably. Edit…unless you are talking about the actual carts I just saw they sell 
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We’ve never had brakes on our cart and its never caused a problem. Also I don’t know what you’re planning to add to the cart, but I’d highly recommend storage for your driver station and a few cables and tools at a minimum.
We put a lift on ours. Easy to work under the robot.
It’s a $60 harbor freight 12v winch with forks on a pair of linear slides.
Not this…
This happened right away during our 1st comp while getting everything unloaded into the pits. What happened was we had our “states wheels” on from last year (the FIM States has the dumbest flooring ever in the pits so we put on different wheels, but change them back for other comps). Whenever we put the non-states wheels back onto our pit cart, we used too small of screws and this happened the first time we hit a bump.
Was definitely a funny sight for the rest of the people unloading, seeing the team carry the pit cart with the bot on it instead of pushing it.
-Park on flat ground when you can(99% of the time at competitions)
-If not flat park perpendicular to the slope
-If needed have someone hold it
We made this cart during last offseason before mttd. The only thing I would improve for future seasons after running with it this year is storage management. Slots for spare batteries and some organizers. A power source would be nice too so that the laptop is always charged and the driver station never has to leave the cart.
This new cart was made to be small enough so that the robot (with bumpers) would be the only thing taking up space. We also designed it with our new driver station in mind. The handle is removable so it can fit in our trailer. The tubing on the handle has holes for future mounting options like a cupholder and a shelf for tools. All four caster wheels lock and pivot for easier maneuverability (All wheels pivoting is not hill friendly but that is uncommon)
Our old cart was really nice for working on the robot but it was really only short robot friendly. It was too tall, long and wide. We had to move the bot slightly off the cart so that the swerve wheels could rotate freely during system checks. it also was very prone to having our old driver station fall off. Having an 8ft by 10ft pit (10ft long) at a regional in 23’ was also a wakeup call to make out cart smaller.
Overall it was a good time investment as a summer project. We are moving forward with improving our pit now.
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Its pretty ridiculous that so many of us have special wheels just for that stupid floor, but its just so bad. (we use 8" pneumatics at states and 5" urethane the rest of the time)
They did better this year with (what I assume) particle board sheet and thicker plastic covering.
OSB I believe. Yes that was a huge improvement, still only a relatively narrow strip in the main aisles, and I believe teams in farther flung pits still had several hundred feet of the plastic flooring to deal with.
Note: This is nothing against the awesome volunteers who run FIM DCMP. Special shout out to Janet, Eddie and Tim who were all great to work with!
I like what you did with the brackets. Did you add Velcro to hold portable controller board in place to the brackets? I really like your controller board.
We did!
I had some crazy ideas for a cart to use relays to control a compressor to keep some air tanks pressurized, with a quick disconnect hose, and on the robot would be a quick connect fitting that connected to a system that shot air at motors for rapid cooling post match.
We could also install multiple heated and cooled cupholders for the drive team, a few folding camp stools, and USB ports for charging phones.
Shelf for a tool bag and another for the driver station of course, and possibly a linear actuator of some kind to run a scissor lift for the robot. And on top of that scissor lift would be a lazy suzan so the robot can be easily spun around.
We have the lazy suzan and shelves IRL on our actual cart, they help a lot.
Anyway, that’s my dream cart.
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