This (half) dirvetrain was designed as part of a knowledge-dump workshop I ran to try and make sure as much of what I’d learned over the course of my three years on my high school’s robotics team, the Iron Panthers. Since when I graduated I was leaving with the only other founding members of the mechanical team, I wanted to make a final attempt at filling in the cracks of any skills which I’d picked up during my time on the team that might not have already been passed down as to not lose institutional knowledge with the graduation of the last founding (student) team members.

The drivetrain is designed to be a model which is densely populated with features commonly used on FRC robots, as well as being designed to make good use of the manufacturing capabilities of the team’s machine shop at school. Skills/elements included in the deign which were passed on included gearbox design (choosing gear ratios, how to dimension them properly, how compound gearing is achieved), sprocket spacing and interfacing with rotating components, the use of SolidWorks Toolbox to ensure there is space for hardware, how to find the appropriate COTS components (and models), and how to set up the g-code required to manufacture these parts on our machines.

Files for the drivebase are available for download from GrabCAD.