Our robot is right on the edge and we were wondering what are some general ideas to conserve space.
I can add a picture of what we have tomorrow.
if it fits in size, dont worry about making it smaller. or are you planning on adding more to it?
we split the chassis in two and are working on connecting it and measuring it with a inaccurate meter stick, it’s sometimes over and sometimes right on the dot.
A hammer, a dremel, and a file usually do it. Funny story, my team was in the line for inspection last year when we remembered that one of our axles were too long. So Jake filed right through it. Anyways, just kind bang the out of size part into size or cut it. It’s never hurt us, so it seems to be a just fine idea.
We found we were out of size at our first competition inspection, so we simply removed a couple sensors. The robot still worked fine.
Sensors are important though, just remove some metal off the edges.
Well it wasn’t the metal that was sticking out, it was the sensors. The point is, plan ahead. Know where you’ll put everything. The reason the sensors didn’t really fit is because we added them last minute.
I like to build my bots with full length c-channels on the drive and make sure that every sub-system fits in side the area of the drivetrain. This gives me half a inch of clearance on each side which makes fitting things so much easier.
+1
25-hole drives are the only way.
Then file, dremmel, or hammer the sensors.
Checkmate @Easton
Pretty sure thats illegal
Definitely. Use only the 2 hole wide c-channels, use the shortest possible screw and part, keep mechanisms as close as possible to each other (make sure their functions are not interfering with each other!)
lol, the thing is, we went to APAC last week right with a scissor lift, and our vertical sliders which we used as supports for the lift. we were 18 inchs and roughly 2mm, failed, realy happy about that
If you can get away with not using IMEs do that. Or just Dremmel off long axels.
+1 to that. 25 wide is perfect to go between the cone rows this year.
We frequently have robots that scrape the limit and have to do minor tweaks to get through inspection, depending on how picky they are. This last competition was the first time that did not happen. The team built their robot as if they had a 17.5 inch limit. They never missed that half inch, and they breezed through inspection.
Here’s a different approach to the question asked in the first post. Build the complete game mechanism first, making it as compact as possible (and keeping an eye on the overall size restrictions.) Once you’ve got the game mechanism tacked onto a temporary chassis, see how it works. Make changes and check sizes. Once the game mechanism works, design a competition chassis to go under it. Make your chassis serve the game, not the other way round.
My other advice is buy a tape measure and use it all the time. 