if you haven’t guessed, this my attempt as revers engineering the bottom section of the famous west coast arm popularized by great teams such as 968, 254, 60, and many others.
what remains is what attaches to the top… and is the true mystery!
Looks familiar
http://inlinethumb06.webshots.com/43205/2059739710099908742S600x600Q85.jpg
Good 'ole west coast style arm.
Looks good! You can make the top less wide and it’ll work fine.
It looks like it’s all welded together (T/F)
I like it. When can we see the rest (or another part of it)? I can’t wait to see how it pulls together.
Omg!!??!!! a West Coast Armavator? That’d be cool since you’ve been talking about 254’s and 968’s elevators.
Looks familiar 
http://gallery.rawc.net/1582-5/DSCN2079.jpg
While I think this is an excellent way to improve your CAD skills and learn more about the various designs out there, the persistent threads are almost overkill? I have seen more than a few threads/topics that have been rehashed from the beginning because of a few recent CAD models. Most of the stuff was covered in the original threads way back when.
I don’t mean to criticize the work; I think you’re learning a lot and should be proud of your efforts, I just don’t see the need to post your ‘interpretation’ of team’s designs so frequently. It can also be somewhat confusing to those who aren’t familiar with the history. It’d almost make more sense to reply to the old threads? If everyone else disagrees, don’t mind me then. Proceed as normal. 
I have to agree with Travis.
I am a big admirer of the designs by 254 and 968. I also CAD things for my team inspired by them. However I just think that by posting your drawings and tagging them to frc968 and frc254 it creates confusion and it takes away from the original designers.
I did like it when you posted your first gearboxes.
It really doesn’t bother me one way or another if you post up each individual cad design but you might wanna think about starting a thread with all of your designs and cad related discussions. Shoot, with all of the individual threads that have been made in relation to your gearboxes you could have a few hundred posts in one thread.
This time of year, the discussion on CD dies down a bit. It’s a great time for people to post CAD pics and designs. Please keep doing this.
Lewis is CADDing some pretty cool stuff here, and I hope he continues.
Travis also has a good point.
My advice to Lewis and others who post their designs is this:
Be clear about what you are posting. Give reference to what inspired you or gave you the idea to make this design. In some cases, it will be a unique design that is an improved method of doing what somebody already did, or it may be a CADded copy of someone else’s design. Both are perfectly fine to post (especially at this time of the year). Confusion won’t happen if you just give credit or reference to what helped you get to the point of where you are.
Issac Newton was a genius, discovered and proved many things, and still gave credit to those who inspired him. He famously wrote to a rival, Robert Hooke:
“What Descartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
The Giants he is referring to are Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Hooke, and many others. Each developed new ideas that would not be done without the previous study of a Giant. While Newton did great things, he still gave credit to those who gave him ideas so he could come up with improvements.
We can all follow Newton’s example of giving credit where it is due.
Kudos to Lewis for having not only the skill to make these CAD designs, but also the guts to post them publicly. Thanks to Travis for bringing up a good point.
Andy B.
I agree with Andy’s points. It is great to such enthusiasm for mechanical design. Practice makes perfect, and each design you do will help you improve as a designer.
Design is after-all, an iterative process…
My only criticism of your posting is that I am not a huge fan of teasers; there is no need to build hype for an off-season project. (There are also some teasers during the 6-weeks which I feel are inappropriate, but that is another discussion.)
Please post your entire mechanism so we can admire your work, but I would hope you can stay away from posting single ambiguous chunks of your design.
I’m not saying you need to stop posting teasers, I’m just saying they won’t pique my interest like a full mechanism design would. I imagine others feel the same way.
Keep up the good work.
Regards,
John
I appreciate so much attention to my work, it certainly has gotten a lot of feedback.
I think it would be rather cool to start my own thread “gallery” of my CAD work, to keep it organized and lessen the spam on CD media. If anybody knows an appropriate place to do this, please give me a heads up
I take ideas very seriously, and I can definitely see where Travis is coming from. I would be rather disappointed to see some of my ideas given praise if credited to another person. I have taken steps to ensure credit is given, but to be sure, I will go back and edit, restate, and emphasize the original designers of the components I have CADed.
Andy is right, I would not know what I know now if it were not for the inspirational and innovative designs of the great teams out there. I cannot thank them enough for serving as such a great model of engineering and design. Imitation is supposedly the best form of flattery after all.
Now, if you excuse me, I have some work to do…
I heard that Newton hit 12 green dots after writing that…
I love the renders, i can draw really well in solidworks. But how do you get that high quality of a render
Make sure you have “Photoworks” enabled as an add-in. Then the Photoworks menu will appear up top, set your material properties/colors and click the render image link, and shazam, sweet looking render.
i didn’t have photoworks on startup and i was manually changing the color. So what should i do, remove all the color?
I you haven’t used photoworks before I would suggest watching the tutorial first as with anything in SolidWorks. Setting the material in for the part does not affect the photoworks material and setting the photoworks material doesn’t set the part material (for weight COG etc…). If photoworks is enables in the add ins then the non render color will be affected by setting the photoworks material. If it isn’t added in then the color is set using the normal appearance settings. If you have already set the appearance settings then setting the photoworks material will change the non render color but will leave the density settings and the like alone.
Hope that answers your question.
Just FYI: I made my own purple candy paint texture, but I suggest using the “car paint” textures to come out with nice stuff like this. I also turn up the shininess of some of my parts, such as my wheels.
If you want, shoot me an email and I can give you the material data files that I use. I also turn up anti-aliasing, reflections, and a few other effects, as well as the contours to produce nice renders like this.
remember, in real life, there are no perfectly square edges, and most extrusions actually have a 1/32 fillet on their corners! those details make a difference in the renders. I turn the contours on to make my CAD more understandable.
eh?
how bout this? :
nice job on the pocketed tubing
that pattern looks a little familiar
on the gearbox though,
it looks nice and compact
just a few quick questions:
BTW: that is the BaneBots 540 motor. i am using the fisher price for a different part of this design. the stall load on this gearbox is approximately 25 lbs, with a 24:1 ratio
