Hello all,
This year our drive base belly pan is a bit smaller than expected and I was thinking of possibly doing a panel made out of polycarb that had our components on it. If anyone has done this in the past or seen examples, could you tell me? it would help out a lot,
Thank you
That is exactly what we did this year. I posted some photos where you can see them, though not very well, in this thread. The girls used the perforated polycarb sheet and ziptied the components to it.
All the time! Here’s an example:
As you can see, RIO and radio on this side; most of the motor controllers are on the other side panel.
Added: The components are mounted to plastic pegboard panels and protected with clear polycarbonate.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-16-in-x-16-in-Plastic-Pegboard-in-Black-17961/202249707
Funny story, we have almost NEVER had our electronics on a belly pan. The only thing that we make sure is in the middle and lowest to the ground on the bot is our CTRE Pigeon and navX MXP- aka also RIO since the MXP plugs into the RIO.
Same here, we are probably going vertical again this year since our devices take up belly pan space.
We did this in 2018 and 2017 on both of our robots. Using power pole anderson connectors we were able to remove the boards and any individual components in seconds if we had to. Pics below from 2017 to maybe inspire some ideas
Our team has done this the past two years, and we get the pre perferated sheets so we can use zipties. It has worked really well and makes it really easy to do cable management and layout without having to drill and re-drill holes.
Last year, we didn’t have a lot of space on our robot base so we ziptied most of our electrical components onto a grid. We attached the grid to the 2 struts which supported our elevator and covered the entire grid with a removable polycarb cover. It worked out really well and the electronics were much more accessible.
How did you mount this panel? Zipties?
Zooming into the picture, yeah, everything is mounted with zip ties (although I am curious how they mounted the Rio…).
We had a side panel for our electronics in 2017. It was definitely one of our better and more accessible setups and I would recommend it. Most components were bolted on, though zipties were resorted to in a couple places. The panel itself was sheet metal.
Just make sure you have access to the rear of the panel or that you are using clinch nuts on your panel.
On a previous team, the student who built the electrical panel insisted on using machine screws with locknuts to fasten all the electronic components to the panel. He missed the fact that there would be another panel installed on the other side of the frame, blocking access to the locknuts. It took much longer than it should have to replace some of the components that failed. I think we Velcro’d the new components in place since it works just as well and it allows much better serviceability.
yes, we used zipties and mounted the grid onto the 2" by 2" struts that were supporting our elevator
On the bottom of most of the electrical components, there are these small gaps in the corners. You can put the small zipties through all of them and mount the components.
One of my favorite electronics tricks that a lot of teams don’t know about is what Team JVN did in 2014, where you mount your electronics to a panel on top of your chassis upside down with a removable protection panel mounted to the bottom of your chassis, so everything is sandwiched between them. Much easier to access in most games than embedding the electronics among your mechanisms.
