Our current team has never made an intake or a shooter and would like to get some supplies together to prepare for prototyping this season. We would like advice on what to buy or gather. We have a box of wheels from KOP chassis over the years, a sample bag of Banebot compliant wheels, some hex shaft, hex shaft collars, and lots of motors. We also have 4 Versaplanetary gearboxes.
We are thinking it would be good to get pairs of compliant wheels in various sizes and hardnesses (not sure of that word). We have no idea what to get to prototype rollers.
A compounding problem is that we have combinations of VEX, REV, Andy Mark and other stuff and nothing seems to want to play nice together. Any suggestions on how to improve that would also be appreciated.
As far as prototyping goes, it really does depend on how much fidelity you want. On our team, prototypes generally consist of plywood frames carrying hex shafts with all the relevant wheels. Shaft collars are a must since there’s no good reason to cut spacers to length for just a prototype. My short shopping list would be:
- Plywood
- Hex bearings
- Hex shaft stock
- Shaft collars
- Wheels (multiple varieties)
- 1/16" polycarbonate sheet
- Sprockets and chain
- Any shaft which can adapt a drill chuck (essentially, turn down to 3/8" on the lathe)
This is more than enough to get started with rough prototypes and get some useful data. However, this list will suddenly get much longer if you want robot-level fidelity.
With using Vex/REV/Andymark together: there are a few standards which all 3 companies tend to adhere to, namely hex shafts, the 1.875" bolt circle, and 2x1 aluminum extrusion. 80/20 can often interface well if you put some thought into it.
As a final side note, it’s probably unwise to use compliant or Banebot wheels on a shooter (intakes are fine) since they tend to deform or explode at very high RPMs.
Thank you, that is very helpful. Any advice on types/sizes of wheels? Vendors?
Add some PVC in there.
You can use PVC with endcaps as rollers on round stock to make rollers/wheels. Instead of chain just make the shafts long, hot glue the rollers to the shafts and use drills to power each shaft.
This is cheaper, faster and easier than hex stock and hex bearings.