Team 4414 | HighTide | Cart Writeup

[jjsessa]

In case you missed it…

Fabworks and WCP have worked together to develop the robot cart of all robot carts. This has been something on the 4414 todo list for several years now as we have wanted something a little more feature rich than our original robot cart, which was one of the first things we built as a team back in 2018!

You can find a link to purchase the cart here: SuperCart powered by Fabworks – WestCoast Products

This thread will hopefully be a great reference for teams who decide to buy that cart, or others looking to make some tweaks and upgrades to their own!

Overview

One of the main goals of this cart was bringing some of our pit organization and mentality on the go. We often spend a majority of practice day field side, jumping right back into the practice match filler line. We end up making a bunch of laps from our pit to the field getting things like hardware, electrical tools, and spare parts.

Because we bring almost everything we use to make the robots to events in our pit, and idea talked about more in the overview of this thread, we cant fit everything on the cart. However I think its very possible for a lot of teams to have a majority of the tools and parts they need to work on and repair their robots in a cart like this!

Assorted Tools

We opted for divider bins with no lid to hold our tools:

Assorted Hardware

Our folding bins (we use auer, but great alternatives linked in our pit thread) are for hardware and electronics components:

Clear Bins

Sterilite bins great for wires, hubs, and larger items:

Misc

Cart must haves such as 2 battery slots, water bottle holders, and a 24" wide dolly

for loading and unloading

Portable Battery

This year we purchased two Anker 521 portable batteries, two so that we can always have one charging in the pit and physically swap them when need. This will help keep programming laptops and the DS charged on the practice field!

Branding

We recommend teams do a light sanding and re-powder coat or spay paint individual parts to get any team color or branding. Powder-coating does stick very well to Powder-coating, so if you work with a local vendor they should be able to repaint them! We are working on some removable lexan sponsor panels that are not finished up yet and will post them here in the next few days.

Happy to go into more detail, or answer any questions! Will post some more updates in this thread as 4414 experiments and optimizes our cart setup.

[Jill_ls101]

Our team saw this today and is very excited. We’ve been looking to replace our cart, but no one has the mental energy right now to design or build, so your timing is fantastic! (One of my students is very excited about the water bottle holders, which was a real gripe on the team last year, when all of ours kept falling out the bottom of our cart…)

One thought did come up though: how easy would you describe removing the handle portion from the rest of the cart? And would the rest still be structural enough for a robot to still sit on? (It looks like it would be…?)

We’re looking at travel logistics to one of events this year where space is going to be at a premium, and temporarily removing the handle for transport was our first thought. (Mini-bus storage = Tiny)

[jjsessa]

Totally missed that in the post! I’ll take some photos this weekend.

The handle removes with 8-12bolts (you can leave some out if this is something you do often)

The cart will still be plenty strong to hold a robot for trailer transport! I would just be cautious about heavy things like road cases crushing the cantilevered corners.

Definitely something we kept in mind when designing!

[Aditya1512]

Is there a CAD available of this?

[0ywfe]

You can find the CAD in WCP’s Site under the SuperCart powered by Fabworks product. Simply scroll down until you see the Technical Drawings and a CAD file of the product. This applies to many other products under WCP’s site too.

[Zatack7]

@jjsessa

The handle removes with 8-12bolts

Wow, you guys certainly chose some coarse-thread bolts for this! /j

[Lilly_7072_FRC_FTC]

OH! So the robot’s bumpers would sit on the pieces that have angles. I just now realized that’s what the intended use was. Seriously though JJ, this cart is FABULOUS! Keep up the amazing work.

[anon28692278]

Is the robot cart small enough to fit on the field?

[ZCam_4415]

@Lilly_7072_FRC_FTC

FAB

i see what you did there

[jjsessa]

@Lilly_7072_FRC_FTC

OH! So the robot’s bumpers would sit on the pieces that have angles.

It was really hard to design around every type of robot, but the idea is you can mount tubes (either along or across the pushing axis of the cart) between those stands to hold either your bumpers, your belly pan, your drive rails, really whatever you want. We do two vertical 2x1 tubes cut to fit between our swerve modules, that sit on the drive rail, when the bumpers are on it holds the robot from sliding forward or backward also.

@anon28692278

Is the robot cart small enough to fit on the field?

No but there is a slot in the cart for a furniture dolly that we transfer the robot to, but often we just carry the robot on the field

[Lilly_7072_FRC_FTC]

@jjsessa

We do two vertical 2x1 tubes cut to fit between our swerve modules, that sit on the drive rail, when the bumpers are on it holds the robot from sliding forward or backward also.

That is actually really genius! Thanks for sharing

[Lilly_7072_FRC_FTC]

Totally wasn’t intended