My team recently bot an andymark climber in a box, and were wondering how teams were mounting it to their robot, specifically the kitbot. What’s the best way to do that?
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I know some teams have drilled holes for mounting in the bottom of the outer tubing where it isn’t in the way of the telescopes, and then clamping it at the top to stop it from rotating. My team did a custom telescoping tube, so I don’t have personal experience though.
We used the existing bracket holes and replaced the kit screws with slightly longer versions.
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Ours is in the center of the bot, there’s a double 80/20 bar that goes across the robot and the hook is mounted on a hinge. I don’t know exactly how it connects but I can take a picture next week if it would help.
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The key thing is getting the winch secured to the chassis, as that drum is carrying the robot weight. As such, I recommend having the bolts which mount the winch to the tube also serve as mount to the chassis.
If your climber will mount forward or behind your drive gearbox, a cross plate would be a great way to mount it- put the two-rows flange down and secure to the chassis at the bottom with threaded fasteners and lock nuts. (Not rivets as this will be under tension!) Then, mount the winch to the vertical portion of the cross plate. If doing this, you probably want to turn the winch 90 degrees to the hook compared to the drawings. (That is, the winch plates will not be parallel to the hook plates, but rotated about the tube axis, so the winch plates are perpendicular to the hook plates.)
Our team made several modifications to the stock climber that worked well:
- We omitted the motor mount plates and mounted the motor directly to the 2" tubing using a small 3-d printed spacer plate the same thickness as the hex bearing flange. The cord was threaded through a hole drilled in the hex shaft and secured with a knot. This was done for packaging reasons.
- The 2" tubing was extended an additional inch below the motor location to provide an additional mounting point.
The arm was mounted to the chassis at two points. Up high we used a 2" square U-bolt and a 3-d printed spacer to clamp the tubing to one plate of a hinge, which was then bolted to an upper cross-member of the robot frame. At the bottom, in that 1" extension, we bolted the climber to the frame using an over-long bolt that compressed a spring captured between two fender washers.
The idea is that most of the load goes through the upper U-bolt, but the lower bolt+spring both constrains the climber vertically should it slip through the U-bolt and also provides compliance when the arm gets banged against the hangar bars, reducing the chance that bending loads cause damage to the tubing.
This plus two fixed length folding hooks that can articulate forward and backwards has given us a rock-solid traversal climber. In our second event we traversed in every match except one where we ran out of time. The climber has not required any repairs.
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