CAD Blog

01-31-2012 • We've Reached The Point Of No More CAD

From here on out we're working through build issues the good old fashioned way. Testing. We feel that we've developed the CAD design to the point where we need more real world testing. Please scroll through the evolution of our CAD for this year's game Robot Rumble.

01-29-2012 • The Latest CAD Rendering - Updated - Again

Includes electronics board concept.

9" deep
23" wide
16" tall (going by memory, might be 17")

01-25-2012 • The Latest CAD Rendering - Updated

New one. Just trying to keep the weight updated, so the electronics board positioning/arrangement is arbitrary for now.

74lbs so far.

01-24-2012 • The Latest CAD Rendering

I haven't detailed the shooter yet, but all that's left with it is some mounting points and the motors. It's probably the easiest part of the bot to figure out, heh.

Work this week should go into the drive train and conveyor system since the components for the shooter are on order or being cut. On the shooter side of things, I modified the weights and flywheel base plate to perfectly match the 8" IFI wheel that's on order. That way we can do 3 potential wheel designs, each having its own advantages. None of the designs require re-work on the shooter setup itself.

01-21-2012 • A Better Fly Wheel Concept

Uses a 1" wide, 8" Diameter IFI wheel as its base, then uses the existing holes in the wheel's plates to mount up to ~3.5 lbs of plate weights to the outer rim for an overall weight of ~5 lbs. Waterjet sketches are ready, and we'd need to order a wheel ($70 with tread).

We can also use the 1.5" or 2" wide wheel, which may give us more or better options for riveting tread to the wheel.

01-18-2012 • A Shooter Concept

I started with a sketch that could mate with the current conveyor system. Based upon the sketch, I supposed that a rotating arm (with limit switch and software) could feed the shooter 1 ball at a time at a specific interval. This would ensure the shooter wheel has plenty of time to spin back up between shots. It also gives us a way to get the ball to the shooter wheel at the same exact entry speed and position every time. After some details for attaching the round guides to the frame, it really looks like we have a feasible solution overall. There are still many details to work out.

01-16-2012 • Preliminary Electronics Board

4 Jags: Drive Train
3 Jags: combination of shooter & upper conveyor, including any turret implementation. Or find more room for more Jags.
2 Jags: Bridge Lowering Device
1 Jag : Spare

Total: 10 Jaguars

2 Spikes: lower conveyor
1 Spike: Spare

Total: 3 Spikes

I recommend putting the electronics board on the front of the robot so the drivers can see the balls inside the robot as the robot faces the other way.

01-13-2012 • New CAD Concept - Updated

Updates!

I plan to somewhat re-do the conveyor frame so it adds some flexibility for mounting a shooter. The side that doesn't have a conveyor on it will go down to a thin wall 1x1, then make 2 other 1x1 bars that go vertically as guide for the ball and support for a shooter frame. Then I'll add in angle supports.

There isn't room to move the battery in between the wheel rails, so the best place for is it right where it is (+/- a few inches either forward or back).

PURPLE: Already constructed.
CYAN: To be constructed Saturday
GREEN: Conveyor frame (Designed to be bolted into the drive train frame)

01-13-2012 • New CAD Concept

Finished proofing the conveyor concept from tonight. We need a slight modification to ensure the ball doesn't get stuck at the position shown, but the added belts are nominal.

I show 2 sides to the vertical conveyor, but we spoke of (and probably will implement) using only 1 side so we only have 1 set of belts and 1 motor to worry about. I used round polycord here because it's easy to CAD, but we'll most likely use timing belt.

I would like some input on the drive train frame: how to reinforce it, do we need the top cross-members to go all the way across, etc.

47lbs and counting. Happy Friday.

01-11-2012 • Electronics Board Ideas

Lots of ideas about the electronics board were being tossed around so I decided to create a new thread so that all of our ideas would be in one easy to find location.

01-09-2012 • Possible Conveyor

Conveyor with belts. Now that the easy part's done, I have to figure out how to do the ball guides. Then on to motor calculations. We can prototype as soon as the guides are put in; just run the belts with a power drill.

01-09-2012 • Full Robot Concept

This is what a cold can do for our build season...

The lime green frame is the conveyor frame.
The purple frame is our drive train frame.
The two frames are designed so that the conveyor frame can be bolted/unbolted to/from the drive train frame to facilitate iterative design.

Up top, the sea green is the shooter wheel concept.
The pink round things are the top conveyor belt stage, meant to take the balls from 0ft/s to almost as fast as the shooter needs. The shooter then accelerates it the rest of the way and puts a backspin on it.

01-09-2012 • Drive Train Frame

Updated with some mount points for a conveyor frame. There will be a dedicated place on the robot for a single electronics board so we avoid the problems we've had in the last 2 years with wiring. Picking up from the back would be very advantageous, but I think it would complicate things a bit.

01-07-2012 • Drive Train Frame

Found a way to put the CIMple boxes beneath the frame, eliminating the need for a secondary frame above it. I might also change the inner rail to 2x1 extrusion so there's something sturdier to mount the rest of the robot to. We can pick different wheels and a specific gear ratio now. A CIMple Box with a 14:40 sprocket reduction nets us 9.3 ft/s and a safety factor of 2.7 for turning torque. Current draw during 0-radius turns is ~60A, or 15A per motor (compare that to 90A current from last year). Time to move from fender to the colored bridge is 2.3 seconds; time to move from input slot to bridge is 2.3 seconds.

Ground clearance: 3/8"
Weight: 25lbs as shown. Need sprockets, wheel spacers, and more frame members for cross support.

01-07-2012 • Drive Train Frame

Basic Concept