Wire Guard for rotational joint using goBILDA pattern

Super Scream Bros FTC (First Tech Challenge) Team#14204

We are a competitive robotics team. For the 2018-2019 Rover Ruckus season, we built our robot using the goBUILDA building system. One thing we were lacking was proper wire management. We have two rotational joints on our robot, and we had some troubles with pinching wires during our first two league meets and in practice as well.

This is our solution for wire management across our rotational joints. We have an X-Carve, and knew from that a drag chain was a good way of managing wires. Unfortunately the drag chain only rotates one direction from center. We needed it to be Bi-Directional. Luckily we came across the Drag Chain link from Bantum_Works which gave us good geometry to start with, and we simply modified it to be Bi-Directional to fit our chassis.

There are two designs, large and small.

The bigger wire guard components can contain more wires and are made for open spaces where a bunch of wires need to pass. These big guards are made up of three parts: two ends that connect to a goBILDA 1120 U channel, and the center link to be linked as many times as needed.

The smaller wire guards are made to hold two or three wires in a compact area. One of the ends attaches to the bottom of the 1120 U channel, but the other end attaches to the inside of the 1121 U channel. These guards use a smaller link but they work the same way as the big wire guard’s links.

We'll upload some videos showing the wire guard in action, but for now you'll have to take our word that it works very well. It is a highlight of our robot.