Servo - December 2014

robot is powered on.

The lights are wired in parallel and have the wires attached directly to the front panel to reduce the chances of a powerful impact causing the wires to move and potentially detach from the lights. The wire leads are routed to the power switch and use the same high current rated connector as the rest of the robot to minimize the number of spare parts needed at an event.

After handling the LEDs, I moved on to putting the drive pods together. The first step in the process was to press-fit the bushings into the inner and outer frame members. The reason for selecting bushings over bearings came down to two factors: With no moving parts, the bushings will be less prone to getting jammed up with arena debris over the course of several events, which would possibly add a substantial amount of extra load to the drive system. Plus, they are far more compact than most bearing options that will handle the same load levels, which keeps the overall robot weight down while maintaining a great deal of strength.

With Nyx, the drive chain is located directly next to the inner frame member. Because of this, the bolts used to hold the nutstrip in place had to be countersunk to prevent the chain from rubbing on or snagging the bolt heads.

The two halves of the drive pod are connected with six threaded aluminum standoffs. On the prior version of Nyx, I used five of these standoffs and never experienced any issues with bending or flex. So, I chose to use a similar setup on the new version. With the standoffs moved from the edges of the chassis to the area between the wheels, I decided to add an additional standoff to help handle any shock loads it would experience.

With the drive pods completed and all of the nutstrip installed, the chassis came together quickly. The slot and tab design meant the frame members were able to be