While walking around the pits at Worlds, I noticed a number of teams with a large amount (1-2 inches thick) of foam or similar padding around their battery presumably to cushion it during impacts. Since my team that has never run any amount of padding and never had any problems. It makes me wonder if these teams have cracked or punctured batteries in the past, or maybe it’s just preventative? Or it could be something more gradual like a faster increase in internal resistance?
If anyone here is on a team that does this, I would love to know when and what caused you to start doing it and what your particular method of cushioning is.
Been a few years since we’ve done wood/polycarb bellypans, but we’ve had the battery shake enough to crack that setup before. So less so about protecting the battery, moreso protecting everything else from the battery. YMMV.
Cant really speak for the 1-2" of padding all around it, but we had some pretty thick foam strips on the bottom of our battery area to prevent the battery rubbing the bellypan and provide some cushion.
Yes, we had a battery case split along a seam in one small section, leading to a slight leak. As a CSA I saw a robot die, with a battery that went open circuit during a rough match. Our battery box spread force/impulse over whole sides of the battery, so the next thing to do is to line the battery box. Next robot.