We have actually built our drivetrain last year very similar to that, with slight differences. One thing I would recommend to make assembly simpler if possible would be to rotate the 2" x 1" piece in between the wheels 90* and just eliminate the additional 1" x 1" standoff currently sitting on the top. It makes assembly a lot easier.
Also, we did a similar mounting of the PDP + Rio, and its important to be able to access the PDP for inspection and trouble shooting. We currently made a little hinge plate that mounts over the PDP for the Rio and kind of opens up or rotates to allow access. I can include pictures of that if you want.
We have actually built our drivetrain last year very similar to that, with slight differences. One thing I would recommend to make assembly simpler if possible would be to rotate the 2" x 1" piece in between the wheels 90* and just eliminate the additional 1" x 1" standoff currently sitting on the top. It makes assembly a lot easier.
Also, we did a similar mounting of the PDP + Rio, and its important to be able to access the PDP for inspection and trouble shooting. We currently made a little hinge plate that mounts over the PDP for the Rio and kind of opens up or rotates to allow access. I can include pictures of that if you want.
Pictures would be great! As for your idea for the 1x1 subframe, I’m not sure that I completely have a grasp on it, but I’m concerned about taking side hits if the game is defence heavy like the 2018 game which is why I made such beefy bumper mounts.
Looking back at how I worded that, let me rephrase and include a picture. It appears you have a slight standoff using 1" x 1" sitting ontop of 2" x 1" aluminum. This is assuming that your wheel is less than 2" wide including spacing, which if it sticks further out than 2", it wouldn’t be as simple to make this change.
We made it how you did in 2017, and it ended up just making welding a pain. We took a look at how we designed our 2017 WCD and redesign/ simpify to cut down assembly time. We cut our average time per robot in 2017 to 2018 from 6 dpr (days per robot) to .5 dpr by just making a bunch of minor assembly changes (and also just practice over time, but a lot was simplistic design).
We made it how you did in 2017, and it ended up just making welding a pain.
Has your team had success with welding? Our mentor who did some welding last year is concerned about shrinkage from the heat. Our other concern with welding is that they do not weld regularly at his company so last year something needed to be welded, and there was not much shielding gas left so the welds did not hold well. For that reason, we think that for our team because we will not be able to weld whenever we want, that we should gusset everything, and if time allows we will probably tack the gussets.
This year, we got a Tormach CNC, an X-Carve, and we found an unassembled 4’x8’ ShopBot in the woodworking shop that we are working hard to find a place to put. These are all things we did not have last year and hope it will let us be more precise. Last year we built a new 2x1 cascade elevator that we welded and put together with no more than a tape measure, hand drill, and chop saw. It worked but would have been better with precision.
