Now that everyone has had a chance to catch their breath after the build season, we have a favor to ask. We are planning to build a robot cart for our week 3 regional. However with the lead time for purchasing at our school, we need to order materials like yesterday (not quite, but almost). So if there is a team out there that is willing to share some plans with us we’d appreciate it. We will gladly take any advice or plans, but particularly are looking for something relatively simple and quick to build, cost effective, and able to be used for years to come.
Thanks everyone.
(In case you are wondering last year our cart was a sheet of plywood with 4 casters that couldn’t track straight. We are hoping for a bit more this year.)
Our team uses a scissor-lift cart similar to this, of which was provided by a sponsor.
If you’re looking into a custom design, are you interested in wooden or metal construction? Are you simply looking for a rolling platform, or are you interested in underneath storage for batteries/first aid/etc?
Things like this pique my interest; I’ll be happy to help with a quick design.
We have a garden cart similar to thisthat we use for our robot most years. Sometimes we use the side walls, more often we remove them, occasionally we’ll bolt some wood on to serve as a stand to fit our geometry.
With the small robot this year, we are using a two-level plastic cart that we have, similar to this to transport the robot and driver station from our workshop to our practice area. Most likely, it will be our competition robot cart as well.
Edit:
Good point. Ours currently says 610 (the class room number of our first head coach). At least Crescent Robotics won’t be down at Bayou from Canada, but we’ll be sure to fix that!
2815 had a similar cart during my time with them. It was heavy as lead, but it was nice to be able to jack the robot up to lift it.
Whatever I used, I’d probably press for pneumatic casters. Some venues use cable protectors or just have bumps in general, and it’s nice to be able to roll right over them without extra effort. (Doubly so because that extra effort comes right as you’re trying to focus on a match!)
We built a cart out of wood. Casters on the bottom, storage shelves above that, and then a platform for the robot on top. Logo burned into the front by yours truly using a soldering iron.
271 uses a custom-built cart. I don’t have any pictures on hand, but basically it is two sheets of plywood connected by a custom scissor system. Super easy to build if you have a couple linear slides of any kind (we made our own from plastic blocks and aluminum 1x1x1/8 extrusion). We can set the height of the cart by adjusting the pins we use to hold the scissor mechanism, so it can be at working height in the venue, but collapses really low for transport to and from places. Added a swing-down handle to pull the cart, nice casters on the base for smooth driving, and sometimes a robot-specific block system to hold the robot up so we can test drive on the cart. Simple, lightweight, maneuverable, and adjustable!
I tried to work with a budget of $150 to make a basic cart made of 80/20 and rubber 5" casters, but pricing on 80/20 reaches $100 just using the 1" framing. Using standard 40mm literally doubles the price.
So, wood now. I tried using standard 2x4x10’ and 1/4" pine plywood with the rubber casters, and still reached $76 total. The “handle” collapses with hinges and screws.
Compact, simple and lightweight. Handle folds for easy storage in your pit.
Use the time and money saved to work on your robot and buy pizza for the team.
We use one of those grey utility carts that we acquired from long ago. Every year we put some 2x4s and 8020 to lift the robot off it’s wheels (for testing in the pit). The top “tray” catches tools and trash and is easy to clean. A small 3-drawer tool chest under, on a shelf of 8020, with specially marked “cart only” tools, plus room on the bottom tray for spare batteries, small vacuum, tarp, fire extinguisher, driver station. Nice and easy.
It’s been a couple of years since the really tall robots (2018 game hint?), but everything we build has to go thru a standard 3’ x 7’ door, so if need be we rebuild that cart to make it work.
One request, from someone working the competition fields: Put your team number on the cart. It just helps.
Everyone thank you for the ideas (EmeraldStorm in particular), and after discussing it we are going to go with a garden cart, and build a superstructure on it.
1672 is very lucky to have a Stryker stretcher from back when Stryker sponsored us. Their headquarters is in our hometown but they unfortunately cut our funding.
The garden cart is good – we had one ourselves for one or two seasons. Just a word of advice: Don’t overload it with all your totes and batteries when you go into a competition! It can’t take the extra weight. A robot or a crate by itself is okay.
And the handle gets awkward in the pit: Up it’s in the way of the robot, down it gets tripped over.
Team 3081 is in the process of making ours, but Imagine this with a scissors lift on the top shelf that has a lazy susan attached to the top. Hopefully this weekend we will get it done, and have a robot cart reveal.
