FRC 3472 Buluk Presents: Tlaczani Swerve Drive

Technical CAD
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Team 3472 Buluk is proud to present our first Swerve Drive design, Tlaczani which means Agility in Nahuatl.

We’ve been working on our own swerve drive for almost two years now. Tlaczani is our third iteration and the first one we are confident in to use on competition.

Now, even though we’ve been working on it for a while it is still on a somewhat early stage of prototyping so every tip, comment or suggestion to help us immprove our design are more than welcome.

Our objective with this swerve drive was for it to be as cheap and easy to manufacture as possible, our school provided us with a lot of tools and machines which really helped us to reduce the costs of manufacturing.
For the materials we chose aluminium due to its light weight, but mainly because we had a supplier that would sell us the aluminium by the kilo, which meant that all the blocks that we needed for the four modules would cost us around 30 dolars.
The second material which was the expensive one is markforged’s Onyx, this one at the beggining we weren’t so sure to use it, but various mechanical engeneering teachers from our school recommended it to us and said it was strong enough, although we haven’t tested it thoroughly we feel that it si strong enough to withstand the stress of competition, if anyone has tested or has experience with how Onyx withstands at competitions, please let use know. Regarding the cost, buying one 800cc spool costed us a bit more than 300 dolars, we are aware that it was very expensive but the postive side was that we were getting the material for all four modules at the same price that a single SDS or REV module would cost us.

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Everything in our CAD has a color code:
Grey: Aluminium
Black: Markforged Onyx
Green: ABS
Dark Green: TPU

On this link you will find the CAD and all of its pieces:
Tlaczani Swerve Drive

Remember that this our first time trying to design a Swerve Drive, so we would really appreciate every bit of help, any suggestions, advice and corrections to the design.

6 Likes
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Good first start!

A few points from the render that should be relatively easy to address.

  1. the weight reduction pocketing on the top plate is far too aggressive

  2. you can probably go to 20dp gears for the increase in tooth strengthen , especially if the gears are 3d printed. Pinions and smaller gears are going to need to be metal.

  3. that is a long cantilever on the steering motor (azimuth), you are going to want to support that motor shaft. If you are 3d printing you can actually make that gear more of a bowl shape to get the teeth higher up to reduce the cantilever.

  4. Aluminum spacers for the motor mounting screws (preferably a larger diameter), you want to keep everything rigid here and abs is not the best material for the task.

  5. You are going to want a steel bevel gear set, not onyx. 3d printing here does not last, too high of loads, too soft of material, too much debris.

Over all a good first attempt :slight_smile:

4 Likes
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My team has had some experience with the Onyx gears in ThriftySwerve.

One main azimuth gear melted in an area. Not sure how this happened.

One encoder gear cracked, but this was also in a hole with no bearing.

Your gears look thicker and more robust so that might be less of an issue.