Here is our render for a WCD, this was our first time ever doing anything in Solidworks. Here is our CAD so any suggestion on improvement would be great. Thanks!
Here is the CAD if you are interested in seeing it, sorry it is very unorganized.
Looks very nice but I would have to say two things. First being that you are probably going to want to support the face of your gearbox more, you do not want that twisting to torquing. Second I love the milled team name, don’t get me wrong, but it will just get covered by the bumpers and now you have just made a weaker beam for something most will never see. Just my $0.02 but overall it looks very nice.
Nice WCD.
A suggestion. Those bumper mounts will be very low. you will only get about an inch of actual material behind the 5 " bumper. We built a very similar drive last season.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/39228
A lot was changed internally but the frame shown is basically what we built.
Luckily the upper frame that held our pick up and catapult provided addition backing to the upper portion of the bumper. Something to think about.
Other wise a great iteration, looking forward to more.
If you guys would like any help with Solidworks feel free to message me, I would be more than willing to help.
We did a very similar drivetrain in 2013 (so much so that we had the tube between the wheels, although ours was 8 wheel drop) and had a horrible time with warping and flexing. We actually weren’t able to drive in a straight line towards the end of it’s life. In 2014 we moved back to our beloved 6 wheel drop and added a top structure. It has been the most solid frame we’ve ever built just because of the second structural layer.
Happy to see your SOLIDWORKS model.
You can take a look at the Blue Cheese model we redid at www.solidworks.com/FIRST
Dividing into subassemblies will help you in organization. Also, download our revised 2014 kop. Use Add File Locations in SolidWorks Resources and browse to the downloaded components to see the all the models that we have created.
Here are some tutorials to help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogKYHcprYlU&list=PLiKqXuECiKNJaUpNv3ZW-gEKDxfWgShwG
There are many people on CD that are very knowledgeable on SOLIDWORKS.
Well done- keep modeling. Marie
Here is an image of our 2014 WCD
As you can see, there are two levels with bracing and gussets in between. The lower level is very similar to the chassis safiq10 posted but with the addition of the top level we have achieved greater stiffness and resistance to torquing and flexing that a single layer is prone to. The second level additionally provides a good area for bumper mounting.
How much did your chassis weigh?
Thank you for all the kind words and advice! This is our very first time working in Solidworks we greatly appreciate all the advice. To address some questions
- This hopefully will be our demo robot, so we have a tendency to not want to put on bumpers on our robot.
- After looking at other teams robot and your advice I plan on adding a top structure similar to Team Driven and 1817.
- We are still confused on how to attach manipulators. If you have any advice or could point us in the right direction that would be wonderful!
Once again thank you so much for advice. Hopefully we will have something up and running by the end of the month. We will definitely keep the community updated on our works.
I don’t remember specifics but without wheels and hardware and 3 CIM ball shifters I believe we sat at about 20lbs
Thanks to everyone who has helped us out so far! Here is our updated CADand here is a rendered picture of it. We believe we are nearing completion but we would like the advice of the CAD gurus on CD. So what do you guys think? Is there anything you think we should change?
http://i.imgur.com/S1Xn5oU.jpg](http://imgur.com/S1Xn5oU)
It looks like you are using shaft collars to old the wheels on. I would strongly encourage not doing that. Use e-clips, snap rings, or bolts threaded onto the end. shaft collars will slide off almost immediately. Other then that, it looks like a great start.
Well that is slightly embarrassing. On the outer wheels there is suppose to be a bolt at the end. I’ll definitely look into using snap rings though. Thanks for the advice!
In my experience, this is not true.
Be sure you use clamping shaft collars rather than set-screw ones. I have never had problems with properly-tightened clamping shaft collars moving in an FRC drive train.
449 ran a WCD with shaft collars retaining the wheels all of last year without any problems.
Disclaimer: Another anecdote
687 also ran a WCD with clamping shaft collars this past season “without issues” to my knowledge. I mean, there were plenty of issues with the drive, but clamping collars were not among them. 
What were some of the issues you had with your drive. Anything other teams could learn from?
Before we forget here is a link to our build blog, which has links to everything else including our CAD models.