We are wanting to build a turret that can rotate and has an adjustable hood. We don’t have any CNC machines. Any ideas?
Wow! Um… Order out for laser/waterjet/plasma cut parts?
That’s quite the undertaking without a CNC.
Hooded shooter wouldn’t be awful, but the turret would be tricky.
If I didn’t have a CNC: id pick up one of these from WCP. You can get a shooter hood too.
Now…I think for many teams, getting a robot done faster is way more important that building a turret.
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I’m sure you’re going to get a lot of really good technical advice about parts, methods, hardware and software stops, wire routing, etc. that will help you build a good turret.
My advice for having a good season is to do something like this in the offseason. A major mechanism that you’ve never built before isn’t something that I’d recommend doing in-season.
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Good news: there are a LOT of turrets that were made for 2020. Start with pictures and CAD from there.
Linking this in here…
if you have never done this before you may want to go down the COTS path. yes it’s more expensive for the single item, but you save yourself a LOT of design and iteration (also can be expensive).
Here is a turret ring that I am fond of in principal (but it’s heavy)
+1. The one from WCP is great out of the box.
I can’t upvote this enough. A turret can become very technical both mechanically and software wise. We put a turret (first time in team history) on our off season robot and didn’t have enough time to get it operational. If you haven’t built one or at least designed one in the offseason, it could bite you in the butt.
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People above me have already talked about why doing something like this for the first time in season is likely not going to end well. I think it’s also important to note that for most teams, it would likely be better regardless to just build simple and effective. This game does not merit a turret nor adjustable hood for 98%ish of teams. This game is amazing for simple, effective designs achievable by most teams. Be careful to not overreach and fall flat.
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Ill stand by my comment that a turret isn’t a great idea, but…
They used a bearing like this in that video. I used these bearings for some custom lazy susans I built.
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in 2020, 1023 printed most of our turret and hood. The only parts that wasn’t printed/cots were the shooter side plates the motor mounted to, and the plate the turret itself was mounted to, both of which we made out of Lexan. I recommend taking a look at 319’s Build thread from 2020 - we found great success using their shooter as a starting point, and we hadn’t ever built a turret before.
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Whether you’re trying to make a turret/hooded shooter or not there are a couple of ways to get quality parts made without a CNC.
- Buy COTS (Commercial of the Shelf) parts
- Printout 1:1 drawings of a part and use it as a guide on the material
- Talk to your local teams (both local to Southern IN and in the state in general)
- Waterjet Cutting of Indiana has traditionally helped teams cut parts for robots
- SendCutSend and other online manufacturing business are fairly reasonably priced
What I would suggest initially is searching around the area for a machine shop that can sponsor you with parts.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! This is exactly the kind of thing that will get you into trouble during a season. It’s great to be ambitious in your goals, but trying to build a totally new major mechanism that is highly complex without any prior experience is just asking for it to take the entire season to get it working properly. My team hadn’t done either of these before this summer, but spent the entire off-season building a IR robot with a turret and hooded shooter for one of our off-season competitions. We did this so the team would have experience with this type of mechanism in the future and so that they could learn how to effectively use our new CNC machine (and there’s the critical element, right there.) Trying to do this without a CNC and with no experience to work from, I fear you’re going to be biting off more than the team can chew.
It might be productive to look at doing only the shooter and keeping it fixed instead of in a turret. Though I’m sure there will be a chorus of dissent on that, it’s a perfectly viable idea to get a solid, working shooter that can make you competitive.
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Not to troll, but if you have to ask such a broad question the answer should probably be “don’t.”
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What is the quality of the construction on your past robots? Is your team able to match the quality of construction shown in the video you linked? Having a successful result requires more than just copying the idea. Much more. It requires being able to execute the idea with sufficient accuracy and quality that the mechanism has a chance to work. Learning to make a complex mechanism during the competition season is analogous to studying for an exam during the exam. That is why so many of us are trying to encourage you and your team to take a different path.
To paraphrase what quite a few people have already stated, your team should build what they have demonstrated they can build and program well.
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