604 proudly presents “OpenPit” - a system of cratelets that emulate a super pit while keeping costs down and making transportation significantly easier.
Over the past few seasons, our team has struggled with packing for competitions as well as keeping the pit organized at competitions. We were inspired by the super pits from other teams, but couldn’t deal with the challenges of transporting the large road cases or justify the cost. For the 2024 season, we designed and built OpenPit.
One design requirement for OpenPit was to keep it a modular design - allowing for customization and upgrades. By releasing CAD and documentation, we’re putting the “Open” in OpenPit, hoping interested teams can replicate, modify, and/or improve the design (and share with others as well).
The linked documentation covers the OpenPit concept as well as detailed instructions on how to build.
Thank you for posting this. There is a lot of Super Pit Envy going around. Good to see an effective sub $8k pit that meets the needs of a quality team… and is expandable.
Whoa, this is an excellent design! There’s a bunch of stuff here that could be super useful to many teams, regardless of current pit status. The drawer and bench designs look super clean, well done!
Outstanding! Willing to bet you could sell these to teams lacking the ability to construct their own. Great way to raise funds for your team. It would be a win-win for buyer and seller.
I build with 3/4" plywood, mostly baltic birch. Rather than nails, I’ve switched to using GRK Finish Trim Head Screws. They work better for me when screwing into the end grain of the plywood. They are not as fast as using an air nailer, but are still very easy to install. As a benefit on those few “oops” moments, they can be easily removed and reset.
Since you’ve used it for a full season, what are the changes you would make if you had to build it again? I’m thinking I would try to put a chamfer on the edges of the handle openings to make it a little more comfortable when moving.
Great project, even better documentation. Thanks for sharing it!
Those screws look great and probably hold alot better than the nails we used, although the nails are mostly just there to help hold it in place while the glue drys and provide a bit of backup in case a joint cracks.
The handles all have 1/4" radius fillets, so they’re reasonably comfortable. Any of the other edges should get sanded or they’re surprisingly sharp (definitely had a few skinned knuckles).
We’re pretty happy with the cratelets as-is. Aside from maybe a cool paint job I don’t think there are many changes we would make. The carts need higher load rated casters. The ones we used are rated for 250lb each, but we already had one fail when hitting an uneven concrete edge. We’re also looking into adding more accessories like lighting.
Would it be possible to make your onshape link be able to make copies of the file so that we could make our own file so that teams can do some customizations in CAD before building their own?
