pic: GUS Team 228's 2009 Robot Render



Here’s our 2009 robot, fresh from rendering in SolidWorks. Hopefully, we’ll have two completed robots to post photos of in a few more days. :wink:

SolidWorks weight estimate: 90.51 pounds, not including the control system or pneumatics compressor.

We’ll see you at the Connecticut Regional and World Championships, and probably a half dozen post-season competitions as well.

Art, I must say that whoever did the design work put a lot of time into it. And it looks very nice. Good luck this season.

Very nice looking!

Reminds me of the 2006 254 robot. :slight_smile:

Thanks, Arefin. I did most of the design and SolidWorks work, as well as a bit of CNC machining for a few of the parts on the robot.

Although I really have to thank our team machinist (Gary Morin) and our team’s CNC sheet metal sponsor (R&D Precision) for turning around so many parts this year. Gary has been working almost non-stop at nearly every team meeting for the last four weeks fabricating parts on our lathe and mill (our school’s insurance policy unfortunately forbids students under 18 from operating the lathe or mill), while the students have been prototyping ideas and making all the non critical +/- 1/16" or +/- 1/8" parts and assembling the robots.

I like to draw inspiration from a variety of sources (including our past robots as well as those of other teams), and then meld it all together into a unique design of our own.

Awesome CAD as usual, its stuff that a lot of us look up to.

Keep up the awesome designs!

edit: wait there’s pneumatics…care to explain or will we just have to see?

NICE, beautiful render, and fully detailed cad, excellent work

Another interesting bit of information about our 2009 robot: we only have six 1/4-20 screws on the entire robot*. Four are on the two pneumatic cylinders (because the rear pivot and clevis both use Ø.25 clearance hole), and two are on the trailer hitch. We used to almost exclusively use 1/4-20 due to it’s availability at Home Depot, however a #10/32 screw is about 58.3% of the weight of a 1/4-20 screw. (That adds up fast when using steel fasteners).

There’s a lot more interesting details, some visible in the render, some purposely suppressed, that will be released in due time. If you stop by our pit (at CTR or Championships), we’ll have a lot more information about the interesting features of the robot, although most likely I won’t be in the pits much due to event volunteering. Eventually I’ll also have the students post the CAD models and drawings on the team website.

  • Everything else is #10/32 socket cap head (most common) or button head, or #8/32 button head.

If you look at the full resolution (2560x1920) version of the render, you’ll see two 3/4" bore x 4.00" stroke cylinders.

As for their function, that’s up to you to figure out. :wink:

It flips down to help funnel balls to the shooter! I think…

hey that looks like it took a wile to plan:yikes:

That is exactly what I was thinking. If you guys are able to control the speed of the shooting and angle I am sure you will be a force to be reckoned with at the comps. Nice job on the 3D design!

Loving the Sick Render Art and whatz the weight, looks macho heavy senor.

I’d have to disagree with that statement as most of the superstructure looks to be 1x1x.0625" square tube, which is insanely light. Plus he also said solidworks calculated 90lbs with out control system or compressor. So it really depends on how you define “heavy”

90 lbs without compressor and control system that is still a ton weight to add. Just my two cents. Plus extra mounts.

After just finishing several more renders, it appears I forgot to set some of the components in PhotoWorks, like the front chassis rail and the timing belt sprockets. Anyway, a different angle of the front of the robot.

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/608/frc2282009robotbasesmalhy8.png

P.S. Does anyone know a really good way to run real roller chain in SolidWorks (especially with different size sprockets)? I know you can do linear and circular patterns, but it’s just so much easier to make a belt-like loop and override the mass properties to the correct weight (25 pitch chain is .090 lbs/ft). I’ll switch to real chain if an easy way exists.

We did a weigh-in of the practice robot (which is a lot more complete than our competition robot, as we send the practice robot to the Suffield Scrimmage) with most of the control system mounted (including CRIO, PD Board, Side Car, 2 Jags and 4 Victors) and the pneumatics compressor and two accumulators. We also put an entire 4’x8’ sheet of polycarbonate to simulate the panels we have yet to cut out. We were missing some parts from the robot, but no more than about 10 pounds worth.

When we weighed in, we were at 99.5 pounds. Adding the other ten pounds of parts still to be installed, and we’re still ten under. And the mounting for everything weighs almost nothing, as we’re using 1/16" polycarbonate with 3/4" x 3/4" x 0.050"-wall aluminum angle with lots of rivets for making everything. Incredibly lightweight and strong.

Arthur - and Team GUS,

This is just a beautiful model. Congratulations.
I won’t get a chance to see you in CT for I will be in Manchester, Atlanta and SolidWorks is a sponsor for Boston. Between FIRST, BOTS-IQ and others - I spend alot of weekends at Robot events.

I know you and your team will do well. Best wishes.
Marie

It looks good but I’m assuming it opens toward the base and that might require a bumper-zone breach. How does it stay within?

So we completed our practice robot this morning in time for the Suffield Scrimmage, and are working on completing our competition robot either tomorrow or on Monday. We’re making a minor design revision to our elevator which should be completed tomorrow*. And as soon as we have both robots fully completed, we’ll shoot some good photoshoot-style photos and I’ll post one of them up here on CD-Media.

But until then, a quick teaser from our practice robot. The competition robot has been painted/wirebrushed identical to the render, and is just waiting to be bolted together and wired/plumbed.

http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/1412/frc2282009practicerobotrg1.jpg

Yes, I know the foam on the front of the robot is being shredded. It’s getting replaced with black neoprene roughtop belting identical to the shooter tomorrow. The bumpers on our practice robot are also recycled from our 2007 robot, although the competition robot will use bright new orange bumpers. Also, our competition robot is going to use black pheumatic belting instead of the neon yellow given in the KoP.

  • When purchasing the stock for the rollers, I cheaped out and bought PETG instead of polycarbonate tube as originally intended, to save $80. And subsequently, it didn’t work as well as intended, so we didn’t really use it at the scrimmage today. Word of advice: if you have the money, just do it right the first time.

Don’t worry; no part of this robot ever extends beyond the bumper zone.

Actually, everything above the bumper zone is at least 3/8"-1/2" inside of the robot perimeter.