TomBot Progress

By Karina, Justin, and Trey

Task: Start assembling the TomBot chassis

Today we made some progress on our round robot. We moved the rev rails and big wheels on the Bigwheel chassis to be able to fit inside the polycarb circle that we previously made. These movements gave us a good idea of where to position the rev rails, but the wheels were too close to the edge of the circle, to the point where cutting rectangular slots for the wheels would extend the slots outside of the edge of the circle. To correct this, we decided to first cut the slots, then adjust the wheel distance on the old chassis to fit the cuts.

To cut the slots we first needed to make a template to map out where to cut. We did this on a circular piece of cardboard the same size as the polycarb. After two attempts at aligning the rectangles, we transferred the template onto the polycarb and cut them out with a jigsaw. We planned to round the edges of the rectangular slots to match the shape of the wheels, but an error during the cutting process caused only the outside edges of the rectangles to be rounded.

Next we needed to mount the rev rail chassis to the polycarb circle and adjust the wheels to fit the new slots. One problem with the chassis is that the rev rails were positioned so that the wheels would sit towards the rear of the robot. After repositioning the rev rails, we marked and drilled holes, then mounted the chassis to the polycarb. TomBot now has the 2 big wheels

Next steps:

We need to add the 2 sets of omni wheels to the front and back of the robot to keep the base flat. We should build a basic wheel mount and design a 3d printed mount. The printed mount would be able to flex to soften to force of the robot on the chassis. The motors also need to be chained to the wheels.