CuddleBunny

Two decisions for you guys to help me make for my 15 lb vacuum robot.

1. How should I armor my wheels? I was thinking aluminum connected to the frame by he use of angles. Or a sliver of spring steel curved around the wheels.

2. How should I connect my plow if i want it invertible? My first idea was using hinge...but that could be easily ripped off. And then after seeing Rattler at the Youth Fair I thought that that was great idea. Their idea was to cut a rectangular hole (it is verticle) and have a loosely fit screw in it so that the plow can move up or down dependiing on if it is upside down or not.

number two is a good idea lol i had actually thought about doing it before the miami competition, then kinda chuckled when they started it towards us.
Its not so much a loose screw, but a shoulder head screw.

What is a shoulder head screw?

Err i guess its just shoulder screw but basically a screw with threads like half way up or so haha

Wow. That actually looks really cool. How much do they run for?

pretty close to the same as a normal screw i believe, you have to be careful doing this though because of what you said with the hinge
Your only going to be holding it on by the diameter of the head of maybe three or so screws, and when facing a drum bot, which youll be using the plow against obviously there is the possibility of sheared screws
hence why we didnt do it

Either way...it still would be a problem. But which do you think is a better overall idea?

Id do a hinge like on good knight, it proved itself to me with the beatings that it took
They had for sections of hinge with like 4 tab things on each piece, then mounted each piece with three maybe four screws

One possible solution is to just have two short large-diameter steel rods with holes in the ends for cotter pins. It would end up being pretty cheap, and should hold up better than most bolts or hinges.

EDIT: and by large diameter, I'm talking 1/2 inch thick, but only 1 inch long (at most).

Sean Rubin wrote:

Two decisions for you guys to help me make for my 15 lb vacuum robot.

1. How should I armor my wheels? I was thinking aluminum connected to the frame by he use of angles. Or a sliver of spring steel curved around the wheels.

2. How should I connect my plow if i want it invertible? My first idea was using hinge...but that could be easily ripped off. And then after seeing Rattler at the Youth Fair I thought that that was great idea. Their idea was to cut a rectangular hole (it is verticle) and have a loosely fit screw in it so that the plow can move up or down dependiing on if it is upside down or not.

The floating shovel on the rattlers works pretty well against wedges, but is a disaster against a spinning drum.

We had 2 different designs. 1 used shoulder bolts as mentioned and the other was different (gen 2)

What won at the Youth fair was the powered invertable wedge. It did a great job at repelling drums and blades, as long as it was positioned on the floor.

In the only match that rattler 2 lost, the driver had the wedge raised and Lucky strike's weapon got under it and bent it quite nicely. Shortly after, 1 channel of the esc went dead and we were toast.

Good luck with it. The floating shovel is great for pushing wedges around.

incase your interested
Shoulder screw from mcmaster
hehe im in this one!

ew ew ew im in this one toooo

Is it just my geekyness...or did I hear "Still Alive" from Portal in the background of the 2nd video?

Well i had to look up the song you said just to make sure but i think its jet-cold hard bitch
They played alot of good music but some of it was just wierd haha

here's another idea if you have the weight to do this:
Make your robot a rhombus shape from the side, so you have a wedge/plow in front and a wedge/plow in back, with the bottom of one of the wedges/plows hitting the floor at all times.

For armoring your wheels:

a sliver of spring steel is a bad idea. Since it's so floppy and flexible and thin, if somebody pushes it up against your wheel, you'll completely shred your own wheel, that would be bad. You definitely want something rigid.

Cody Harris wrote:

Well i had to look up the song you said just to make sure but i think its jet-cold hard bitch
They played alot of good music but some of it was just wierd haha

it cldnt have been cold hard bitch...it was a somewhat soft song with a girl singing...
im pretty sure it was Still Alive

Ive seen alot of teams using UHMV as armor now
Im not sure how it actually does, i would think you could bite better into it then al. but i just thought id throw out the idea

godughifu wrote:

For armoring your wheels:

a sliver of spring steel is a bad idea. Since it's so floppy and flexible and thin, if somebody pushes it up against your wheel, you'll completely shred your own wheel, that would be bad. You definitely want something rigid.

Not a "sliver". I meant like a somewhat thing piece of it. Like 2 inches thick. That wont ruin my wheels.

Sean Rubin wrote:

Cody Harris wrote:

Well i had to look up the song you said just to make sure but i think its jet-cold hard bitch
They played alot of good music but some of it was just wierd haha

it cldnt have been cold hard bitch...it was a somewhat soft song with a girl singing...
im pretty sure it was Still Alive

Hard to tell but im pretty sure its jet haha

Sean Rubin wrote:

Not a "sliver". I meant like a somewhat thing piece of it. Like 2 inches thick. That wont ruin my wheels.

DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HEAVY A 2 INCH THICK PIECE OF SPRING STEEL WOULD BE???!?!?!?!!?

Dughi. I mean 2" by like 10". That is length by width. Im not gonna buy any new spring steel...jsut the stuff we have left over from trianglebot.

you could get titanium... i know you probably don't want to redo your design, but the rhombus shape is a good idea.

Sean Rubin wrote:

Cody Harris wrote:

Well i had to look up the song you said just to make sure but i think its jet-cold hard bitch
They played alot of good music but some of it was just wierd haha

it cldnt have been cold hard bitch...it was a somewhat soft song with a girl singing...
im pretty sure it was Still Alive

Nope, that's not Still Alive. Still Alive has no electric guitars.

Argghhh i wish i even knew what this bot looked like!

And im pretty positive its jet BTW

Dan Curhan wrote:

you could get titanium... i know you probably don't want to redo your design, but the rhombus shape is a good idea.

Im not gonna re-do my frame this year. I might next year if i want to stick with a vacuum bot. No time or money for it. My adviser got pissed at me today jsut because I asked if i could shave off the sides to fit a different gear box in. He goes on rampages like that for no reason sometimes.