Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

If you are still looking we have a great design document. Our robot was completely designed in Inventor...

We did fairly well on the field... With the help of our alliance partners we won three regionals (Central Washington, Seattle and Spokane) in three weeks in a row and also won a Chairman's Award at Seattle. Innovation in Control at other 2 regionals. Six Disk Auto and a quick shooter with a corner 10 point hang.

Semifinals on Curie at CMP (#2 seed and 8-0 in quals)

Let me know if we can be of help.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Team 353 throughout build season our design process was to split each section up by parts. One of our main plans was trying to let the kids learn as much as they can but ask mentors for advice and tips to see if it would work or they would see a problem we might not.

Hopper/Feeder: the intake system a senior worked with another student to draw up, dimension, prototype and make a final design with it drawn to scale on cardboard to see its size.

Drive Train: we thought about what dimensions we wanted that fit in the frame perimeter and then decided how we wanted our robot to move and let the underclassmen put it together the first week so programmers could work.

Climber: a couple of students built multiple designs with vex kits and chose a final design. Made a mock up that would work on the actual robot after testing with a scaled down pyramid. They then determined all the math behind how the gear ratios would work so we wouldn't blow out a motor.

Shooter: After coming up with the two prototypes we wanted to test we had a couple kids work on each and make a mock up within 4 days. After running tests with both we made our final decision. We made a drawings and more tests before building the final one.

Electrical board: we made a cad model of how much room we had under our shooter with all the parts from other systems in the way and determined where we can store all the components and where we can run the wires while keeping it coordinated and organized.

Throughout the whole process we made drawing in our engineering notebooks which we would make a final copy of after any changes. Photocopy it and put it in a book in case anyone needs to make another part and would bring the book to competition. We also allotted weight limits and at the end of each week weigh our systems so we made sure were under weight. We gave a deadline for when the parts would go together and on the chassis while leaving room for wiring and programming.

We also did a lot more and if you have any questions you could message me about them

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Hi, this is a representative from team 2537--Hopper Lead
2537 used 3D printing extensively throughout the robot. Our climber hooks that you can see below were actually 3D printed. They were strong and never failed. They were printed to 100% fill and, on our own home practice pyramid, held our team captain when we tested the hooks. They are capable of holding to at least 500 lbs.

Also, our team, midway through the build season, decided on a hopper that featured something like a "stairstep" that allowed the frisbees to automatically fall down. They handled upside down and right-side up frisbees equally well and jammed only once. Considering that our team was able to cycle at least 4 times in most matches (not including practice matches), this means that our hopper only jammed once through hundreds and hundreds of loadings. The reason I am bringing this up is because, except for the slide, which was made out of polycarbonate, the entire hopper mechanism was 3D printed. Yep, a 4-frisbee hopper that jammed only once and was the largest 3D printed mechanism ever built by our team. It measured about 5-6 inches high and, obviously, needed to accomodate the 10 3/4" frisbees, so we couldn't print it all at one time. So we printed it as two parts. You can see a picture here:

and here:

We have CAD model documenting all of the hopper, so if you want I can include those as well. Our team, despite our dismal record from "The Blue Alliance", played far beyond its bottom ten ranking at Chesapeake. We averaged 40+ points per game, which, when compared to the other robots at Chesapeake, was nothing to laugh at. We always accounted for over 50% of our alliance's points, and often we accounted for over 60% of our alliance's points
Gabriel, RAID 2537 Mech Lead

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

I forgot something else. Many of our parts were made with a mill and I believe some were made with a lathe.