2022:T-Shirt Drive Base

CAD and Testing 7/18/2022

So today we took to the CAD and ditched our old design since the wheel shaft would not have two points of contact. We tested our new design in the CAD, and in order to reuse parts, we are exploring reusing our 2019 RB2 drive base. By the looks of it, this option seems viable and will allow us to save resources, which is the name of the game in this project.

Final-ish Design! 7/25/2022

This is our drive base as of 7/25!

Things are looking up for the Drive Base! It's been a week since the last entry and a LOT has changed. 2019 has been semi-confirmed as viable to use as our drive base. The CAD is mostly finalized, and we have decided on a 6 wheel drop center drive base, with 6" pneumatic wheels. Our overall drive base dimensions are 27.835" by 34.240". The frame perimeter is slightly larger than a traditional FRC frame perimeter, but the width is less than 30" which fits one of our main constraints. We are using the same gears and pulleys as 2019, but just shifting axle position and whatnot. Below is a picture of it. We are just waiting on a second confirmation from one of our mentors before we move forward. We also did some calculations with West Coast Belt Calculator and with our center distance of 8.592", we would need a belt of 115 or 120 teeth.

Fabrication Fun! 8/9/2022

Things are coming along as we take our CAD and turn it into a real robot! We hit a few roadblocks along the way, but we are trying to work around them. Drilling the bearing holes with a hole saw caused some of them to be too large and our bearings are loose. In order to combat the sideloading that this would cause, we are going to clamp the drive base sides together with churro tube. Other than that, assembly has been going pretty well. We cut a belly pan out of clear lexan and supplemented the water resistance of it with two strips to really close things up. Once we get the side loading issue fixed with the churro tube, we should be ready to roll with wiring!