Awesome! I really haven’t seen a whole lot, if any, videos detailing this process. Plus, these videos are well made and the content was taught well! ;)
Do the latches still work smoothly after taking a big impact? Other mounting systems we’ve tried (pins, wingnuts, etc) have worked fine until the bumpers took a hit in a match because the attachment system bent. This then leads to a very difficult time when changing bumpers and leads to us having to break out the dremel to make them fit. Thanks!
I'm from the Jagbots, team 4638, and my team used those same latches last year, but had some difficulty with the latches being lose if the height of the standoffs wasn't just right. I would think that you would want the top of the latch to rub a bit against the notch in the standoffs in order to make the latch more secure and keep the bumpers from coming lose. Do you have any opinions on this? Also, your team uses wood screws to secure the brackets? Have you had any problems with them stripping the wood and coming lose? If so, how did you fix them? I've been using tee nuts on the other side of the plywood and machine screws to secure them ever since 2016 when we had to modify our bumper mounts every time we took a hit and stripped the wood. It makes it so that the screws won't come lose when we take a major blow and if they do we can just screw them back in, but it makes the design/manufacturing process harder due to having to drill the bracket mounting holes in the plywood first, then measure and calculate where the pattern for the clips needs to be on the brackets, which is the most difficult part. The real issue why it had to be done this way is the tolerance of our bumper frames, we can never quite get the gap right because of bowing in the wood and the glue joints not being quite right. It ended up being too much of a hassle this year, so we ended up just mounting the bumpers with 1/4"-20 socket head screws. Do you have any thoughts on how we can improve our process? I mean if we had access to a planer, then that could probably solve our problem and we could just do everything in the order you explained in this video, but we don't. How do you assemble your bumper frames?
A lot of questions here. Can you use thebluealliance.com to point to a site with pictures or video of your 2018 bot? I'm guessing there is a fundamental difference in how we are using the latches. One thing to note is that our latches only keep the bumpers from lifting off the bot. All other loads transmit through the bumpers to the support rails. We occasionally have wood screws stripping from enthusiastic overtightening, but rarely from gameplay. One tip is to use high grade plywood that holds screws without stripping, like aircraft grade or marine grade plywood. Cheap pine construction grade plywood doesn't hold screws well and should be avoided. We recheck bumper screw tightness between matches. If you get a recurring loosening problem, you can use epoxy/wood glue/CAA to firm up that particular screw hole. Re frame workmanship: We don't use glue joints. We pre-cut the strips to width on a table saw during the summer months. The corner brackets are also premade. The task during build season is to cut the strips to length, hold the corners square, and attach the brackets with flathead screws. In years past, the strips were cut to length with a table saw. This gives precise cuts. I think this year a bandsaw was used, which isn't as good, but still worked. But, workmanship matters just as much as when building your robot.
Awesome! I really haven’t seen a whole lot, if any, videos detailing this process. Plus, these videos are well made and the content was taught well! ;)
Thanks! Glad to be of help.
Do the latches still work smoothly after taking a big impact? Other mounting systems we’ve tried (pins, wingnuts, etc) have worked fine until the bumpers took a hit in a match because the attachment system bent. This then leads to a very difficult time when changing bumpers and leads to us having to break out the dremel to make them fit. Thanks!
I'm from the Jagbots, team 4638, and my team used those same latches last year, but had some difficulty with the latches being lose if the height of the standoffs wasn't just right. I would think that you would want the top of the latch to rub a bit against the notch in the standoffs in order to make the latch more secure and keep the bumpers from coming lose. Do you have any opinions on this?
Also, your team uses wood screws to secure the brackets? Have you had any problems with them stripping the wood and coming lose? If so, how did you fix them? I've been using tee nuts on the other side of the plywood and machine screws to secure them ever since 2016 when we had to modify our bumper mounts every time we took a hit and stripped the wood. It makes it so that the screws won't come lose when we take a major blow and if they do we can just screw them back in, but it makes the design/manufacturing process harder due to having to drill the bracket mounting holes in the plywood first, then measure and calculate where the pattern for the clips needs to be on the brackets, which is the most difficult part. The real issue why it had to be done this way is the tolerance of our bumper frames, we can never quite get the gap right because of bowing in the wood and the glue joints not being quite right. It ended up being too much of a hassle this year, so we ended up just mounting the bumpers with 1/4"-20 socket head screws. Do you have any thoughts on how we can improve our process? I mean if we had access to a planer, then that could probably solve our problem and we could just do everything in the order you explained in this video, but we don't. How do you assemble your bumper frames?
A lot of questions here. Can you use thebluealliance.com to point to a site with pictures or video of your 2018 bot? I'm guessing there is a fundamental difference in how we are using the latches. One thing to note is that our latches only keep the bumpers from lifting off the bot. All other loads transmit through the bumpers to the support rails. We occasionally have wood screws stripping from enthusiastic overtightening, but rarely from gameplay. One tip is to use high grade plywood that holds screws without stripping, like aircraft grade or marine grade plywood. Cheap pine construction grade plywood doesn't hold screws well and should be avoided. We recheck bumper screw tightness between matches. If you get a recurring loosening problem, you can use epoxy/wood glue/CAA to firm up that particular screw hole. Re frame workmanship: We don't use glue joints. We pre-cut the strips to width on a table saw during the summer months. The corner brackets are also premade. The task during build season is to cut the strips to length, hold the corners square, and attach the brackets with flathead screws. In years past, the strips were cut to length with a table saw. This gives precise cuts. I think this year a bandsaw was used, which isn't as good, but still worked. But, workmanship matters just as much as when building your robot.
What are the latches you are using?
Hello! They are Dzus 1500 Series sliding snap latches. They are available from Pegasus Auto Racing, DB Roberts, and McMaster-Carr.
Added latch part number to description.