Drivetrain developed for our offseason robot. CAD file can be found in “Victim Ball shifter Transmission”
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0Byz5jjxS1rqUVmpTa19BeGZ6bkE?usp=sharing
Drivetrain developed for our offseason robot. CAD file can be found in “Victim Ball shifter Transmission”
A few quick things about the lightening: first, since the motors are cantilevered, you can cut off the whole outer plate above the standoffs. Second, you lightened the hell out of a eighth-inch plate that only weighs, what, .4 lb? It’s a ton of machining to save ~.1 lb and increase your chances of your gearbox exploding. Also, keep in mind to design in an easy way to mount it to a chassis.
It’s definitely a cool concept, what are your plans for it?
I’m hoping to use it for this years game if the field allows it. We ran that exact gearbox on our offseason robot and it performed beautifully with a high speed of roughly 17.6 FPS and a low of 5.8 FPS, those are adjusted values. A slightly modified version will be used for the actual season.
I am assuming that is the drive you used at Ramp Riot this year. Nice job on it. Mounting ears/lugs are always a nice touch to add IMHO. Just a thought. Could you use the same plate the motors are mounted to for both sides? That way you only need to stock and machine one style of plate.
Yes, the plates are made to be symmetrical around the Y-Axis so that we only have to make the 1/8 and 1/4 plates and not designate Left or Right transmission specific plates. When assembling the transmissions one would just change which hole the drive shaft is mounted through. It is designed so that the drive shaft sits closer to the middle of the robot and the PTO mounts towards the rear of the robot. This was done so that all the wheel axels could be driven by a chain, I didn’t like the idea of attaching a Colson directly to the output shaft of the gearbox.
May I ask why? If you chain the gearbox to the middle wheel and then chain the middle wheel to the front and back and the “gearbox->middle wheel” chain fails, you lose an entire side. On the other hand, if you direct drive the middle axle and have the front and rear be chained dead axle, a dropped chain will only affect one wheel. Running 6 dead axles seems to be adding complexity that doesn’t need to be there.