Hello,
I’m with Team 1559 and we’ve been wondering about using an engine stand in our pits (or at our own facility) to mount our robot to so we can work on bottom-mounted components more easily. Several of our team members have thought about this and we were wondering if any other teams have done the same.
If no teams use an engine stand, is there an easier way to flip the robot upside-down to access a bottom electrical panel without using an engine stand/significant human effort?
I swear I’ve seen a team that did this, but I can’t for the life of me remember where I saw it.
We just put the bot on the floor on its side.
our robot transporter is on a toolbox on a hydraulic scissor lift. so we can pump it up in the air if we need to
We build a lift into our robot cart. A 12v 2000lb UTV winch and the forks are on a slide.
5937 has a great PVC stand for their robot. It was 4 PVC post that held their swerve drive with cross member. Let them work on the electronics and test their swerve. I wish I had a picture of it.
I’ve seen a team do this once maybe a decade ago. It makes for a pretty cool display when you want to show a judge the bottom of your robot.
It does raise some pretty significant balance and mounting issues though, particularly if you have mechanisms (arms/lifts) that rely on their own weight to keep them in place.
Just think “do I want to wheel another piece of equipment into the venue?”
The answer for me, pretty much regardless of utility, is a resounding “no”
Ymmv
On a personal level, the less stuff I bring to comp the better I feel.
Safety glasses/ear plugs, a phone, notepad/pen, and a waterbottle is ideal.
I’ve sometimes thought about using an engine stand as a replacement for our cart. Hydra from Battlebots does this.
However, the thing that is going to be a problem is center of mass, and that if your CG is above the mounting points, it will be unstable and try to flip on you when you don’t want it to. Hydra is flat, really flat. The mounting points are on the main frame, but there’s nothing really above that to raise the CG, so it’s CG is below the mounting points.
We’ve worked really hard to get our CG as low as possible in the past few years, but assuming we’re mounting to the 2x1 chassis, we’re never going to get our CG below that. So you’d need to raise the mounting point, but then you’re adding weight for a feature that you wouldn’t need with a normal cart, and you’re trusting your robot and your safety to those mounts.
Frankly, we’ve never had to work on the underside of our bot so much that this hassle seemed necessary. We just put it on the ground and tip it over.
Thanks for the shoutout, here are some images of our “oil rig” as we call it. Its designed to work both on and off our robo cart due to the cups we have installed that keeps it snug.
Its been super helpful having our electrical members work down under while doing mech checks up top!
This is not exactly what the original poster is looking for, but it may be helpful:
When we need to access something under the robot, we jack it up using 4 of something like these, lifting it up on the exterior frame. They work very nicely, are inexpensive, and are easily portable to a competition.
