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Engineering project help

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4man
Posts: 159 - Karma: 151
hey so im doing a project for second year Mechanical Engineering at U of A and we need to build a robot that drives down a mini basketball court and shoots ping pong balls into a mini basketball net. only thing is we need to decide what size of wheels we would use for driving it. our options are 72mm or 36mm. one pair will drive and one will do the steering. i was thinking using the larger wheels for driving so we could get more torque and accelerate quicker and the smaller wheels for steering so that it would require less torque to turn them and it would turn faster. can anyone tell me if im being an absolute idiot or what they would do differently. most importantly why since i need to explain it in our progress report due tomorrow. figured this is a good place to come since a lot of people in my faculty seam to be newschoolers. thanks for the help in advance.
Oct 19 2014 5:52PM
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Lé.Skiing
Posts: 10035 - Karma: 8,128
use the big wheels for turning and torque. use the small wheels for stability.
Oct 19 2014 5:59PM
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caucasian_chad
Posts: 4078 - Karma: 3,625
4manfigured this is a good place to come since a lot of people in my faculty seam to be newschoolers.


Your profs are on here?
Oct 19 2014 6:14PM
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yuck
Posts: 8384 - Karma: 2,090
how does the steering work? will you have purposefully pivoting wheels or will you alternate power to the drive wheels?
Oct 19 2014 6:23PM
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Phil-X-
Posts: 7205 - Karma: 14,399
Small wheels for turning, large wheels used for driving
Oct 19 2014 6:27PM
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RevolverHustleO
Posts: 294 - Karma: 566
Lé.Skiinguse the big wheels for turning and torque. use the small wheels for stability.


Nailed it.
(did a similar project in elec. engineering)
Oct 19 2014 6:49PM
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RevolverHustleO
Posts: 294 - Karma: 566
Also all you need is 2 motorized wheels (motors need to be separate) and only one small wheel
Oct 19 2014 6:53PM
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4man
Posts: 159 - Karma: 151
i guess i should add that we only givin two motors. one motor is used simply to drive the wheels (reversing the current gives us a reverse). using a ratcheting geer system we are piggy backing the firing with the steering. one way the motor spins, it powers our firing mechanism, when it switches to the other way it spins a shaft turning steering axle on one axis. we will only be able to turn it the axle in one direction, but it can rotate a full 360 degrees so we will still have a full range of motion. also, we are givin two 72mm wheels and two 36mm wheels. thanks for your replies so far
Oct 19 2014 7:00PM
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cmacrae
Posts: 19 - Karma: 48
A mate did a similar project and had to build a robot to drive a set distance picking up split peas. They ended up using a stepping motor because they were limited to one motor and that would provide the most torque
Oct 19 2014 11:22PM
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