10.05.2012

Bottoms Up

Done! End! Fin! The SolidWorks for the new robot's chassis is finally done! Know what that means? Me either. The new chassis is fairly similar to the one we used on last year's bot, since that one worked pretty well anyways. If it isn't broke, don't fix it; that's good news for our programmer at least, and the build guys have less to take apart now. You're welcome!
Chassis
The new chassis keeps the best aspects of the old one – including its 2:1 gear ratio for drive motors, which provided enough torque to move our monster of a bot faster than it probably should have been going – but boasts some improvements. For starters, it's only got one omni-directional wheel on either side, as opposed to two on the last chassis (which we changed because, during the finals, we kept getting pushed around by our opponents because our bot had no lateral grip). The plexiglass plate in the middle is new too; it's there to give us a place to mount our motor controllers and help de-clutter our wiring – a serious problem last season. The rest of the design was carried over from last year's bot.