We’re a rookie team (3512) and using the Kit Bot for the basic chasis. We’re planning on having a duplicate upper frame that’s about 9" above the main frame. We’ll have the majority of the electrical components inside of the 9" frame.
Does anyone have good ideas on what’s the best way to connect the vertical connectors (struts) to the upper and lower portions of the chasis. We don’t have ready access to a welder, so we’re trying to figure out if there’s something comparable to the corner connects for the vertical pieces.
The best answer depends on what you’re planning to do up top. Are you intending to use this upper part strictly to protect components below, or are you mounting a big heavy arm to it?
Probably the easiest solution in the former case would be angle aluminum (especially if you cut your frame an inch short on each dimension–if you didn’t, watch out for your bolt heads). If you don’t have room on the exterior of your frame, threaded rod might also work for you–I’d suggest spacing it off with some smallish-size PVC pipe.
(And as much as I love AndyMark’s product and service, you’d probably save a bit of money doing that upper frame in angle if you didn’t have some overriding reason.)
We are planning on putting our arm on top of the upper frame. Heavy is a relative term here and I think the total weight of it, including motors will be less than 25 pounds. Our minibot will also sit on top of the upper frame and that’ll be another 10 pounds. So, not too heavy of a weight, but certainly enough that there will be a lot of stress on the upper frame during collisions or if the robot topples over.
Is there any way to attach the “stuff” to the main frame? it would probably be stronger and lighter, and you would not need to figure out how to attach two frames together.
When you build the “second story” make sure that it is slightly smaller than the “first floor” to avoid screw-heads, et cetera, being in violation of <R14>.
I think if we decided that we needed to make a “double decker” chassis, we’d probably use something other than the kit parts to build the chassis. The kit pieces work well to make a single layer (that’s what we’re using this year, for the first time), but it gets difficult to add much stuff on. Of course it’s kind of late to change designs now, and it looks like your plan will work, it’s just a lot of effort to make all those little parts. We spent the past two days making 4 brackets that hold the top end of our tower together (and provide the arm pivot point), and 4 more that hold the bottom end of the tower to the kit chassis.
