is there a way to use High Strength Shafts without drilling any holes in the metal?
you can mount the HS bearing blocks between two pieces of metal, but I’m not sure how well that will hold up.
I have tried this before, it doesn’t really work that well if the shaft is going to be under a lot of stress.
The easiest way to use HS shafts without drilling any metal is to figure out the spacing for the bearings and then cut the shaft to the perfect length. Then the shaft sits inside and is supported on either end.
This has worked pretty well for us. For reference this is the exact same thing that was used to move an entire dr4b on our Houdini Ri3d so it held up to a lot of stress.
Did you still drill holes for the c-channel in the middle of the gears?
May i ask why you do not want to drill a piece of metal for this?
People may not have the equipment or the money for equipment to make a hole like that. It took me a rly long time to make the holes for my robot cause all I had was a crappy old, broken dremel.
I guess… however all you need is a drill with a large bit, and that is one of the most basic and easy-to-find power tool I can imagine (much more common, I’d assume, than access to a dremel). I’d be pretty astonished if there were more than a tiny % of robotics teams that had absolutely no access to a drill with a large bit - parents, teachers, janitors, handymen… I’d even be willing to bet that an enterprising team who needed a drill & specific bit that they couldn’t find internally could probably just pop over to almost any hardware store and find an employee willing to drill a quick hole out (at least in the US).
Another possible reason for not wanting to drill a hole is re-usability of unmarred metal pieces. The drilled out pieces can still be used for almost all purposes, but some have a low parts budget and/or a desire to keep things as “like-new” as possible. I know that at various points in the past I have made the team work hard to convince me that it is worthwhile to modify or buy a new metal piece when they hadn’t shown with rough prototyping and lots of discussion that the idea was worth pursuing.
my teacher does not want to cut any structure pieces (not sure why)
You mean no cutting… at all? Not even for the drivebase? Nothing?
How do you all manage?
we can cut shafts and some times the 1x25 pieces but not large structure pieces
Y? Is ur budget low? Since I’m actually limited on parts, I’m actually cutting as little as possible to make my robot work (I have like 20 axels jutting out of my robot lol) and right before my first comp I’m gonna cut off the extra c-channel and axels so I can make any changes before then. Maybe ur coach could let u do this?
we are semi low budget because its a one semester class
K then. R u competing in tower takeover in this class? Cause if ur not, I see y ur teacher doesn’t wanna cut parts. After all, there’s not much more than a grade on the line and the coach will understand if u couldn’t exactly do the best u could cause u needed to cut.
we are competing in tower take over, 4 competitions
Anyways, back on topic, I’m pretty sure the only way to use Hs shafts without drilling holes is to have it rest between two structure pieces and in the middle of 2 HS bearings. I dunno how well it works but it seems like Logan10622D didn’t have much luck with that set up.
it really depends on how much weight is going to be put on it
i am making a claw bot for a back up while the others build a tray bot
i asume dr4b?
Most of the time normal drill bits bits work fine, they are a lot cheaper than the robot, if you were able to afford to get a vex robot there is no reason you cannot afford a drill bit. 5\16 works from what I understand.