Created in an effort to design a effective and complete chassis and drive train to serve as a “phoundation” for the team in coming years. I wanted to prove a design that was compact and elegant yet still contained the bulky new control system. It is also be easy to maintain, with a removable electronics board and cotter pin release bumpers. finally, all of this could be built using not much more than a band saw, drill press, and welder, optimal for my team’s resources. Or could be made from wood =)
4 CIMWalts
6 4" wheels, dropped center
8 Jaguar speed controllers, full control system
50 lbs total, sans bumpers and battery
9 lb aluminum chassis
What thickness of Aluminium are you using?
Nice Render by the way
.125 walled extrusion, for both the rails and crossbeams
AAAAND The offseason has officially begun.
Looks very nice.
this is a subliminal hint to the GDC to do away with the “full support behind the bumpers” rule? 
Nice design. Seems it would be useful to have the team come up with several different chassis/drive ideas, that will work with different possible games (long/narrow, short/wide, ramps, funny surfaces, with/without bumpers, w/without floor harvesting, arms, etc). I know the 6wd long robot stuff we worked on last fall was way different than what we ended up building!
Nope. I think it’s pretty blatant. 
Besides. Couldn’t you hear the screaming all year? hehe
This is a beautiful render. Thanks for sharing this!
And 6 inches on both sides of every corner rule? :rolleyes:
Looks nice. Hopefully it could be used in some future competition.
You might consider extending the beam that the wheel is mounted to out a little bit so that if you ram a wall at high speeds, you don’t break/bend the wheel. 254 welds a piece of 1x2 out front for this purpose. And has broken it off before in a match.
Looks pretty good otherwise.
the wheels are extended beyond the frame to allow the chassis to overcome steps and other small platforms. this is also why there are no bumpers on the corners. This could be amended to fit the current bumper rules, and if there is a flat field. Thanks for all the feedback!
Lewis, you’re too godly at SW. Stop it. You’re making me jealous.
Awesome render though, I like the compact layout of the electronics, especially with the cRIO int he back. Looks purdy.
That’s definitely one of the nicer Renders I’ve seen. I really like the drive base too. The only comment I have is that your battery and master breaker placement seem odd. They Seem like they’d be hard to get to if you build an arm or something on top of this chassis.
The only thing I can see wrong with such a design is that it seems like it would be difficult to pull the battery out with a manipulator on top of this nice looking chassis. Then again, I’m not much of an engineer. Personally I’d put the battery where the cRIO is.
Is that the Wireless Game Adapter over by the cRIO and right next to that CIM? Based on feedback I have seen from teams I would definitely not put the Game Adapter there. In fact, I don’t think I would put it anywhere on the pictured chassis, I would wait until the rest of the robot got designed and try and put it somewhere higher and a little less surrounded by metal and motors.
hehe, as y’all can tell, I’m not on the electronics team. Agreeably the battery, main breaker, and wireless adapter are in bad places. The manipulator superstructure would provide a good spot of the adapter, and fee up space for the battery and breaker in the back. Perhaps I could design a basic manipulator and work with that. maybe this one
[Minor details]
From an electronics perspective, I would say that the worst thing about the board isn’t the battery placement. The worst thing is the power distribution board placement. The wires poke straight out and will want to travel at least a 1/2" straight out the side of the PDB. In this diagram, it look like the Jaguars in between the CIMs may have some wiring clearance issues unless the electronics team uses 90 degree mounts, so you could push the Jags our a little further so long as they don’t interfere with the chain runs. It’s great for how compact it is, but it would be a nightmare if a wire ever has to be replaced.
Also, you have a cross beam right underneath the forward-placed CIMs. The 4 Jags in the front MUST have their wiring go underneath that cross beam for the board to be fully removable. The best way to do this is to probably just have the wires poke down underneath the board right out of the PDB, then travel up to the front, then come back up through a hole right next to the Jags. Not hard to do at all, tbh.
[/minor details]
Another option that should give you more room overall is to create 1/16" or 1/8" sheet metal L-brackets for the Jags to stand them up vertically. Your current setup is ideal for this since all of the Jags are paired in their placement, so they could be mounted vertically back-to-back.
I love the weight distribution of this chassis; as-is, it will turn on a dime even at max speed 
. Great job!
perhaps you should try this out at the offseason event?