Hello,
My team is looking to build a fast and agile drivetrain to use for training, I was thinking use a colson drivewwheel, and west coast with a tube frame around it to protect everything
Let me know if you have any better ideas pertaining to gearboxes, the beginning design I have now is 36x32 with 1.5x2 inch tubing
design sounds good, 2 andymark 3cim4u gearboxes should be pretty snappy and fast for what you want, i believe they are 5-1
I would suggest looking at a shifting gearbox if you are planning to build a dedicated training robot anyway – it is a good idea to get a lot of practice in the off-season to try and get used to it. The 2 or 3 CIM Ball-shifting units from VexPro are a great place to start.
What is the purpose of the bot? Build, programming, driving, cool demo bot, etc.?
Kind of all of the above, for me to train drivers when I am graduating (I’m a rising sophmore I have time) programming practice, but still last long
I would suggest doing some sort of 2 speed butterfly drive if you have the resources then. It should be a good exercise in design, construction, and gearing for build purposes. It should be a good exercise in automatic gearing, encoders, and probably a bunch of other sensors for programming. The base is relatively versatile for games like Steamworks and Aerial Assist where you need good traction and mobility. If your driver ends up not using strafing much in practice they still have a good feel for regular arcade drive. It should also end up as an awesome bot for demos.
A 2 speed butterfly drive is a pretty ambitious design for a training robot, assuming this team hasn’t mastered a custom “standard” tank drive already. I would not recommend this design concept as a starting point for most teams just beginning preseason training exercises.
I recommend just building a good West Coast Drive with VEX ballshifter gearboxes and bearing blocks. It makes it very easy to adapt for whatever game FIRST gives us. 1678 always does WCD, and we are able to adapt our usual design to whatever we need. Usually we are ready to make parts half way through the first week of build season.
Honestly, if you have the resources then just build a Stronghold robot. It gives you practise in 3-4 major design areas (robustness, shooting, drivetrain design, and maybe climbing), and would be great driver practice. Not to mention being a great demo bot (call it a dodgeball robot and you’re golden).
All I know is we built a frame called scary bot with 4 wheels, 2 cims per wheel. It’s a beast.
16 wheel drive, 775PRO-in-wheel design?
You’re probably right about that. I might have gone a little overboard with my suggestion. ::ouch::
I stand by my 2 speed drive with 4-6 wheels (Watch out for scrub forces needed to turn on a dime!). Depending on how advanced your group of engineering students are, leave a spot opened in the center to convert to H drive at some later point if you have time/budget and student intrest.