Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

That felt very cool to be included in that list...

For those of you that don't know the back story, here's the quick (ish) summary. All season, I and a mentor had been arguing that a robot that could climb and dump for 50 points every match, as well as score a few in autonomous, could win the vast majority of matches. We believed that we didn't need an intake to do well and even win Davis. I could go into what caused this strategy to fail, and why the rest of the team seemed to hate it, but I'll largely skip that part of the story. The essential part is, that after three weeks of fighting, we ran out of time, and shipped a robot that really hadn't been properly tested or iterated. Our robot as shipped looked big and gangely, and was totally designed around a 30 point climb.

Unfortunately, even with all the iterations we added on at Davis, it didn't work. Basically, the travel on the climber was shortened by about two inches because of a last minute gearbox redesign, and we couldn't climb. At Davis, we had a robot that drove around and even shot a few discs, but really wasn't very good. We didn't make eliminations for the first time in maybe six years of competition. It was a big blow to the team.

When I went off to visit schools for spring break, those who had been dissatisfied with the robot we played with at Davis decided to do something about it. They spend their entire winter break designing a short shooter that was to be put on in place of the enormous climber at competition. They built it at our shop and a local hackerspace. In the end, we had a short little bot that could shoot from the front and back of the pyramid, and hang for 10, and it looked awesome because of the black powdercoat.

When we got to SVR, we spent the morning taking off the climber, and putting on this new shooter (which they called Mark II). By the end of the day, it was working pretty well, and we even went out to a few practice matches to actually practice (whaddya know?). It shot extremely straight, almost like a laser, and hung pretty well too. We got our three point autonomous working well too.

Friday and Saturday, we had a blast. We finally had a competitive robot. After not scoring more than one or two frisbees a match at Davis, we were suddenly scoring three or even four rounds a match plus auto. We ended up going 7-3-0 and seeded 12th, and would have gone 8-2-0 and ranked 9th or so if a screw hadn't come loose during one of our first matches. Here's my favorite match by far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAMQ8mJdsLk. We ended up getting picked first by Pink, which was another amazing feeling.

It was a wild ride, and a testament to the powers of iteration. We also did some cool stuff with awesome tools like sheetmetal punches and breaks, waterjet machines, CNC mills, welders, lathes, 3D printers, rivit guns, powdercoating machines, and much much more. Everything but the sheetmetal was designed, made, and assembled by students. I could go into more detail, but it's getting late.

It would be an honor to be included in a 2013 Behind the Design book, and I really think we have an amazing story to tell. Consider it.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

I'm in for a 10 copy pre-order, PM me for a VISA card number

I'd like to see someone that build and won with low-tech (plywood frames works for me)

COTS parts -- Ri2D or similar

Advanced with lowtech stuff (string pots)

Cool drives (1640 pivots)

FCS!!! so far so smoooooth how does that work.

Climbers. Putting 6 weeks, $6500 in parts on a pipe? Really??

I'm in!

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Team 3467 is interested!

Our robot is a combo of CNC milled parts, full CAD model, and a fully autonomous 30 point climber. Our operator presses one button in the last 25 seconds, steps back, and 18 seconds later its hanging off of level 3!

The combo of our simple, clean, and highly serviceable shooter/overall design and our autonomous climber won us the Engineering Excellence Award at the Pine Tree Regional.

Stop by our pit and Archimedes our students would love to talk to you guys!

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Vince/Stephanie -- I sense a Kickstarter in your future...

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Isn't there a cost limit of $4000 for the robot?

I'm in for at least one copy when this gets finished.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Our robot is a fairly good example of this -- plywood shooter, kitbot frame and belt system, and no custom gearboxes (this robot is almost nothing but COTs). One district win, 2 creativity awards, 1 innovation in control

2729 used one of these to great success with their shooter angle at MAR champs. They have several other sensors too for enhancing their shooting ability.


Also, I'll buy one, and I know that I'm not the only person on my team who will want a personal copy.

That s-pot was key to our success at MAR Champs especially considering the vision/dashboard problems we had during the competition. The s-pot allowed us to move our tilt table to preset positions on the fly rather than eyeing it up with a camera when we get to the goal. It was easy to integrate into the robot and software too, took care of it Thursday morning.

We also use two other custom sensors we built on the robot too; 1 hall effect sensor on our shooter wheel and break beam IR sensors. Our robot is mechanically simple, the control systems really enhance it.

Nate

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Thank you all for the posts and PM notes. Very promising material to work with.

We are also anxious to get additional CAD, control, simulation and design-process stories in the book, noting that these stories are among the most hidden in the competition. Any leads on such are very much appreciated.

While Stephanie and I will be visiting folks in the Pits (mostly Stephanie as I wear a few other hats at Championship) teams are welcome to drop off material for us to look at (post-Championship) at the pit of Team 236 - The Techno-Ticks - Archimedes Division. I help mentor the team and Stephanie is an alum. The Ticks will save any material you drop off and we will get it back in CT. If nothing else, the Ticks have a fully printed wheel-shooting system that was part of the inspiration for the book.

Folks reading this thread may also be interested in a talk by the FIRST alum founders of Formlabs (new 3-D printer) at the FIRST Championship Robotics Conference - THURSDAY - 7:00 PM - Room 240 of the America’s Center. Jason Livingston, Max Lobovsky and Ian Ferguson (FIRST alums of 694 and 1257) will talk about how is developing a high quality low cost 3D printer like building a FIRST robot & how can FIRST teams use 3D printing to build even better better robots. It should be a REALLY interesting talk.

Continued thanks to all - Vince and Stephanie

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Vince,

I am excited to hear that another Behind the Design book is in the works. They serve as great inspiration to me and the teams that I am a part of. Thank you for your willingness to work on another one!

FRC Designs may be what you are looking for. FRC Designs is a database for FRC robot design ideas and solutions. This database consists of previous and current robot designs for the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). The database includes images, videos, and CAD of robot designs that are submitted by FRC teams. I am currently gathering submissions from teams for the 2013 season to be added to previous years.

Please let me know if you have any questions about the site. I would be honored to work along side you and Stephanie if need be. Thanks!

FRC Designs: http://www.frc-designs.com

Matt
FRC Designs
Founder and Engineer
matt@frc-designs.com

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Team 2175 also did some stress analysis stuff with our cad that i would be willing to show you

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

We, 2826, in Newton, had our gears in our drive train gearboxes and shooter gearbox coupler 3D printed this year.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Team 3941 CAD modeled our entire robot, twice (when we revised our shooter design) in PTC Creo. We also have 3D printed mini models of our robot in different stages that helped us get a feel for the entire composition early on.
The vast majority of the parts on our robot, most principally our frisbee shooter, are CNC milled; the shooter and loader and almost completely made of CNC-ed wood.
We also used our CNC machine heavily in the prototyping process. We were able to quickly create two working shooters and several more loading mechanisms before narrowing down our solution with the aid of our CNC.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

A quick post to update everyone on this project.

Thanks to all who offered to support a new book. Stephanie and I made a formal proposal to a publisher for the book, and we hope to hear back from them soon on a decision to publish.

We pitched a book that focuses on advancements in the design, manufacturing and control of robots, with five FIRST robot case studies used in each chapter to illustrate these advancements.

If the proposal is approved we will detail a process to solicit FRC case studies in the following areas: Design (using CAD tools for design, simulation and analysis), 3D Printing, Computer Aided Manufacturing (other than 3D printing), and Control (including hardware and software).

The requested information will include an explanation of the innovation and images (photos, graphics and screen-shots) that illustrate the application. I realize that accessing information will be difficult due to summer vacation, but we will have to work around that.

More to follow on this as we move ahead over the next few weeks.

Thanks - Vince and Stephanie

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Although we didn't make it to champs, we made it into finals at both regionals we went to this year (KC & North Star). We ended up being ranked 47th in the world :) Anyway, we CAD'd all of our robot so we could CNC all of our parts.

Another thing we do is build our robot in a module based system, which is super effective as if one sub-system breaks, we can easily fix it.

Check out our website for more details.