You saw the retooled Skyway wheels last year. They were normal Skyway wide wheels turned down and slotted using a fabricated jig and a table saw.
The gearbox is a new idea. It is completely modular, powerful and lightweight. It mounts with 20 screws. It has 8+ entry points for axles allowing the insertion of one or more motors to drive the gearbox. The plastic gears cut the weight of the mechanism to about 1/3 of the same design using metal gears- we made both.
Our students can rip one down and assemble it again in about 5 minutes with two hex wrenches. We made a spare in the event of damage that we will have to show to visitors.
Check it our in our pits this season. Brought to you from the team 25 BMS shop crew
And keep an eye out for some other neat stuff going into our machine this year…
the only thing that concerns me is the plastic gears…we used brass last year and had massive problems. we had problems with some of the plastic gears.
are you sure they’ll be able to stand up to the load of a pushing match on the ramp? (130 lbs. + incline + another 130 lbs. + incline + velocity of opposing bot = a lot of force)
the gears will take whatever force you put on them. The gearing should allow very little pressure on any given gear and the motors used will take up a lot of any stress we encounter.
Right now we are sitting at about 100 lbs complete. If we need to we can return to the metal gears shown in this pic since we have the weight to spare. The job would take about 1/2 hr to switch them out.
We WILL come in at 130 lbs - just a lot of the weight will probably be filler weight.
Thanks for the compliment. I know you really cant see the “game plan” of what we are going to do yet but I’m getting tired of all these “teaser pix”. No guessing how this works.
actually, i’m thinking that you guys are going under the bar, only cause that robot looks low. also, you can see a bit of the inside, and it looked like it was simply a big box, maybe for placing components in, all below 14"?
i’m probably wrong, but hey, if i’m right, you’re not the only one amazed :p.
Oh yea Arm i forgot about that :yikes: