Hey everyone!
This is going to be a daily/weekly thread for Team 951C’s Toss Up robot
There wil be several reveals and sneak peeks throughout the summer so stay tuned in and you might learn something 
hahaha jk
Hey guys here’s the first sneak peek for the chassis design…
Hey guys!!!
Just finished the design prototype for the Chassis!
Thought that you guys might like to see it 
PLEASE comment and criticize! haha
How tall is it to the top of the base? It doesn’t look like you have a lot of room for a lift from the pictures. Look’s like the bump will be no problem though!
Is that REALLY necessary? As sdbrobotics said, it doesn’t look like you have much room for a lift.
The bump really isn’t that much of a problem.
Without a larger picture and a scale, it’s really hard to judge the design, or help you with it.
That being said, where is your lift/intake going? From what I can see, you have about an 8" gap between those wheels, and the Buckyballs are 6" across. That’s not a lot of room to build whatever it is you’re planning to use. Additionally, your baseplate looks to be about 6" up. That gives you 6" for whatever lift you’re planning to build. Are you planning on making a multi-stage linear lift? That’s going to be something like 10" thick by the time you have enough stages to reach the 40" bar.
Additionally, your motors are running a risk of being destroyed, being that unprotected. I know we (and I’m sure some other teams) are running at least one defensive design this year. There’s a fair chance you’re going to be hit as you’re going to score. If we’re pushing you from the front, are you sure those are going to hold up?
What motors are those? They look too small to be a 393, but that could just be my perspective. I haven’t seen a 269 in a while. If they are 393s, you should consider swapping out the internal gear ratios for speed, as I’m not sure if you can fit an external gearing system on the wheels if you push them out like that.
I would recommend making a 6-wheel drive base. Maybe put the wheels on Pillow Block Bearings if you want an extra tiny bit of clearance between your chassis and the ground. The wheel mounting system just seems unnecessary, and a huge thing to design your robot around.
A 3 stage scissor lift will be around 8" above the base (that’s what ours is) If you try to get it any flatter you will need some serious torque to lift it, the first few degrees of movement are the worst part of a scissor lift so you wont be able to flatten it out without so much elastic that you cant pull the base up to hang. A 2 stage lift will allow you to score the 24" goal, but you would need an entirely different mechanism to hang with.
Since sacks are not scattered on the field to get stuck on, I suggest going with a 6 or 8 wheel drive and getting your base lower, but that’s just my 2 cents. Don’t forget the bump is tapered on the sides and is not difficult to get over, the only real issue is getting over it without getting stuck high center.
The distance between your wheels from side to side is not that big of an issue with the proper intake design, I am suspecting there will be a lot of over engineered intakes at the beginning of the season.
Here are some more pictures with a scale on it…
The “arch-like” feature of the robot is 9" tall and 16" wide
I did forget to mention that it collapses down to a 5’’ height with a span of 22’’
I am thinking of putting rollers on the sides of the robot so I can hover over the bump and get those bucky balls on top of the bump as well as the ones on the floor.
and what I mean by rollers I mean like the ones used in either gateway(horizontal wheels) or the ones used in sack attack(vertical rollers)
I can’t decide which type to use…I think the horizontal rollers will just kick up the balls w/o picking them up where the vertical rollers will pull them in. I think I just answered by own question 
haha
I could also try a combination of both like this kind of shape:
**l
- O -
(asterisks used for spacing;ignore)
Where there is one vertical roller and two horizontal wheels or rollers and the O is a bucky ball
ehhh I’ll have to mess with it…
I dont have a lot of room on the sides where I would put the rollers (approx 2.5" of room on each side)
^^^^^^^sorry for the small pics
How do I show pictures w/o the link? just directly on the reply?
oh and incase you guys were wondering, the robot would start in the arch position…
This is actually genius for another reason 
hahha Android I would love to know why and how hahaha
If you can justify having the drive sit that high, and can show me that you have a well thought out idea for your lift and intake, then sure, the build quality looks great. Otherwise, you should really design the whole robot before building. If you don’t have a lift in mind right now, you just really hindered yourself by making a base that big. I have noticed that you have been talking about unique designs quite a bit, which is great, but you should always make sure that your unique design is worth it. I have said this before, but you really have to analyse the pros and cons of your design. A unique design that works just about as well as a 6-bar, but takes longer to build, weighs more, and is more expensive isn’t worth building in the first place. Not to say that being unique isn’t good, but you should really think weather the amount of clearance on that base is worth it before you build it to be unique. Like I said earlier though, If you can show us what you have in mind for a lift, It looks like it was built very cleanly!
a side note: the arch to flat feature is powered by rubber bands so it will start off as an arch then it will collapse down because of the weight of the lift (which is undecided yet) and then when it rolls over the bump the legs flip down into the arch position again.
The additional pictures shed a bit more light, this is a very interesting concept and if it works dependably it is brilliant.
Thank you Austin and sbdrobotics 
I should have decided on the lift first but at the time of thinking of a lift I needed to think about the bump then when I was thinking about the bump I was thinking about the chassis and now I am thinking of the lift again 
ughhhh it keeps circulating in my mind!
To be fair, I made my post before I saw the picture of the base sitting lower to the ground, so with that in mind, it may not be so hard to design a lift for the robot lol. It is still good practice to design the whole robot first though. It does still look like a very well made base, and it is a pretty neat concept!
I’m not too sure about that. Side rollers worked wonders in Gateway.
good point…It’s all about spacing and/or adjustable rollers. If I remember correctly some had rubber bands attached to them so when they did pull in a cylinder or sphere it adjusted then squeezed it through. I am going to do some testing with that in mind…
And no worries Austin. Thank you
Side rollers worked wonders in gateway because they were able to deal with barrels of all orientations. They did nothing special for the balls. Overhead rollers work fine with gamepieces that roll readily, like the buckyballs, allow more flexible motor distribution, allow for a wider intakes, and spring loading an overhead roller is a great way to deal with multiple size objects (See 254A in Clean sweep).
A wider intake could end up being a problem when you’re scoring unless you make it a funnel that’s just wide at the back. I could see one of those working. I guess having a shorter intake might make it easier to lift. Hm…
This may end up being a good idea.