FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

A third book on FIRST robot design is in the planning stages, with the goal of a January 2014 publication. The focus of this book will be to highlight advanced manufacturing techniques that have been implemented on FRC robots in the 2013 season, with potential chapters on design techniques and methods (such as CAD and simulation), modern manufacturing (including CNC machining and 3-D printing), and control methods (including the innovative use of sensors and programming). Each chapter will begin with an overview of the state of the art in that industry, with the rest of the chapter devoted to case studies of these applications on individual teams.

As noted, we are in the planning stages of this project with the details for submitting material for review to be developed over the next few weeks. Stephanie Slezycki and I – who wrote two previous books on FIRST robot design – are again working together on this project and the intended format will be similar to the prior books.

While the opportunity to submit material for possible inclusion in the book will be available to all teams, both Stephanie and I will be at the Championships to talk to industry leaders (for profiling in the chapter introductions) and to visit with teams that have innovative applications that may be worthy of publication.

If you are on a team that has successfully implemented such techniques on your robot, we want to hear from you. If you are at Championship, we would like to meet you and see your work. Using this post, please let us know your team number and division, and how your team has used advanced manufacturing principles in your robot this year. Pictures welcome! This first call is simply meant for us to confirm that enough potential content exists. We will issue a detailed set of instructions at a later time that provides additional information on the project and submission process.

We look forward to meeting as many of you that we can this week, and we look forward to learning about the many innovations that teams have created for their 2013 FIRST robots.

Cheers – Stephanie and Vince

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Hi Dr.Wilczynski,

Really excited that a new issue is in the works. I was just wondering, however, why the 2nd book is priced far more than the 1st book. (Other than paperback versus hardcover)

http://www.amazon.com/Vince-Wilczyns..._athr_dp_pel_1

Can't wait for the new book!

Thank you,
Akash Rastogi

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

because the book is not new. They sold out some time ago. The price is probably from a third party trying to make a large profit on hard to get books.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

So excited to have the books coming back! They're so great.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

If we're interested, should we PM you or respond in this thread?

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Here are a few of the things that we did this year that might be of interest to you:

-CAD modeling of the entire robot. This was particularly useful for about 7 complicated design constraints on our arm geometry that the collector, conveyor, and shooter mount to.
-Water jet cut sheet metal for our shooter tray and our hooks. We didn't really take full advantage of using sheet metal (no bends we made), but it is a significant part of how our robot came together this year.
-CNC lathe work on the pulleys for our polyurethane belting.
-Manual lathe work and bridge port mill work on many parts of our drive system in particular.
-Welded aluminum tube frame.
-Hex push broaching.

Any other questions just let me know or stop by 20's pit in Archimedes!
Good luck with generating interest.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Responding to this thread works!

If at Champs, be sure to list team number and your division (to make it easy for us).

Thanks!

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

FRC 2468 Team Appreciate is in Archimedes this year.

We utilized a 3d Printer for about 20 parts on the robot. The one item that is most interesting is the string potentiometer we printed the parts for and made. This item provides us feedback on the deck angle of our shooter so we can shoot from anywhere on the field. We have gone thru 4 or 5 iterations of the final design. An equivalent item would cost in the range of $150 - $400 and we produced for considerably less than that. BTW, we received our 3D printer during week 4 of the build season.

LED lights on the robot that responsive to the sounds in the stadium. They flash and turn colors with the beat of the music. The LED panels were custom made and utilized a feature of the CRio that is not used by many.


Our shooter is made of HDPE deck with a custom made HDPE wheel and HDPE hopper/Jason' Deli Pickle bucket and rail system. All custom made on a CNC flatbed machine after prototypes we made. Shooter has vision control and PID to assist in shot selection, robot alignment and control. The shooter is mounted on a sheet-metal frame that was designed in SolidWorks and sent out be waterjet cut and bent for the robot.

Please come by our pit in Archimedes for more information, visual inspection and demonstration of the above items.

Norman

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

some of the things my team did

-CAD our entire robot
-3d Printed our wheels (sponsors printer)
-3d printed various robot parts such as spacers, encoder mounts (in house)
-lots of Manuel mill and lathe work (in house)
-Laser cutter (sponsors machine)
-Water Jet (sponsor)
-CNC Plasma Cutter (In house)

Id be happy to discuss our use of any of these with you, you can send me a message on CD or stop by 2175s pit in galileo

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

In addition to full CAD, student CNC'd swerve modules, and a student lay-up'd carbon fiber shooter and electronics panels, our 30 point climber has:
- team laser cut polymer guides
- student, in-house milled delrin skis
- student-molded wheels with composite inserts from a custom CNC'd mold
- student, in-house welded leg braces & chassis
- student, in-house milled clevises, among other industrial manufacturing parts
In addition to our IiC for the climb and our MAR Championship (mostly on the shooter and swerve drive), we also received a Creativity Award for a heads-up targeting display: our driver can wear safety glasses with LEDs that light up to indicate which direction to spin, based on camera targeting.

Swerve Modules...Climb Legs...Shooter Layup...Robot! (mid-climb)
Stop by 1640 in Newton for more, or browse our site :)

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Team 359 is interested. ;)

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

This is awesome.

We refer to the first 2 books frequently.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

This is awesome!

When we ran our chapters at the end of the last year, we learned just how huge an undertaking it is to edit and format and put together a very short version of the real thing. So much so that I'm rather glad to see the real thing come back. Frankly I wasn't looking forward to giving it another shot, though I think my students were :D

I can't wait to get my hands on it.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

I know that the last series was ended doto financial concerns; if memory serves. If it would help, i'd be willing to pre-order 10 copies.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Could you share which CRio feature this is?

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

We used a manual mill and manual lathe to build most of the parts of our robot, as well as a water-jetting sponsor for important yet obscure parts (transmission plates/brackets, funny shaped gears). Lots and lots of iterative CAD modeling and packaging went into the design of our climbing mechanism, but that is a process that is not easy to document!

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Team 1816 The Green Machine in Curie has cool stuff for you to see!

Our robot this year utilizes, and won the rockwell automation inovation in control award for:
-3D printed "augers" (helixes) That hold and index frisbees when in a triangular pattern.
-Ornate water jetted baseplate for the frame of the shooter.
-Fully automated vision control system with point and shoot accuracy.
-Fully CAD-ed robot
-3D models with moving parts to show off the robot.

Come to our pit and any of our team members can give you more detailed information, or ask for Kevin. You can also look at our website www.edinarobotics.com for a picture of the robot.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

We've been waiting years for this book, thanks!


I wonder if you could do a small bit (perhaps one robot) showing how a robot can be built without any modern manufacturing techniques? Just to put it all in perspective. I doubt we have sufficient documentation of our low tech build, but someone might.....

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Team 696 is interested.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

This would be awesome. Kids these days (:rolleyes:) put way too much emphasis on having computers doing all the work instead of using their brains. Our school has a CNC (only, doesn't have handles!) mill, CNC routing table, and 3D printer and at the insistence of a few of us mentors we are just getting a manual mill.

Looking forward to reading it!

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

I'll buy at least one!

But it really should include team 1899. Using laser cutter, common "door skin" plywood, a bit of epoxy and some brilliant CAD, they have created the lightest, stiffest, cheapest robot frame at worlds.

Okay... technically I haven't seen all the robot chassis going to worlds, let alone conducted stress tests and detailed financial analysis of them, but I'm more than confident that they deserve to be "in the book".

And, for the record... this isn't one of those million dollar lasers that cuts steel... this is a relatively affordable wood/plastic type of machine. I encourage you to try standing on one of their backup chassis!

Jason

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

222 would be happy to have you come visit our pit in Galileo!

Since I am a sponsor and mentor of 222 I will be in attendance at the championship.

We have a wide assortment of 3D printed parts on our robot this year. Everything from sprocket spacers to frisbee launching device to bearing blocks.

Here is our original frisbee launching device in the lower area of the picture. At the end of the build process we figured that it was critical to redesign the "pushing" device to allow for frisbee stacking. We were quickly able to 3D print a new design that was shorter and also wedge shaped so that the forward motion pushed the frisbee forward into the launching tire. The backward motion is where the wedge shape came into play by allowing the wedge to push the stack of frisbees up and over the pusher device to fire the rest of the frisbee stack.
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot...01574046_n.jpg

If you do happen to be interested in speaking to me and I'm not in the pits when you stop by just ask for a team member to text/call me so we can find each other.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

The students of FRC2168 would be happy to discuss our robots design and our manufacturing style with you. We'll be on Curie this year (the team's first year ever making it to Championships).

Here's a picture of the rev 2 robot this year. The team completed a complete redesign of our superstructure between regionals.

No matter what I will likely do the same thing I did last year and post up the design break down of both machines I mentored this year.

Thank you again for getting these books up and going again. They are an awesome resource for the community.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Vince,

We have a nice control system to control the angle of our shooter. It is very precise. It won a control award at Boilermaker. Stop by FRC 1741 in Newton.

I am looking forward to meeting you.

-Hugh Meyer

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

We use the DI/O ports of the sidecar, one each for red, green, and blue, and a custom circuit for the LEDs.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

125 is interested. We are very proud of our design, and our pit crew would be happy to explain the systems and how we designed and manufactured them. Please come find us on Galileo.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

I'm excited to see the positive responses about the next book, and I look forward to meeting you all at the Championship. Keep those posts coming!

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

You're more then welcome to stop by 1902's pit and talk with some of our students. We'll be in Archimedes (just look for the pig face beacon on the wall).

Our 'Users Manual' is here if you want to get an overview of our design and build process.

Thanks for doing another edition, I look forward to reading it.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Hi Vince and Stephanie! Great news that a new book is in the works! If you have time, please feel free to stop by Team 78's pit. We will be in Archimedes. There are several robot parts that were 3-D printed and some parts that were cut out with a waterjet/CNC mill. The kids would love to show our hard work! See you in St. Louis.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Vince/Stephanie -- what balance of price point and quantity of information are you guys aiming for? Also, will there be a software-specific section, or will it be limited to strictly mechanical items?

We don't have anything special w.r.t. hardware -- but we're doing some pretty cool things with software. We will be at Champs (Newton) if you'd like to see.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

100% in for buying a book.

You should have a pre-order signup at champs - as a minimum get people to sign up on a list but better yet get a square and collect pre-orders! I for one will put my $ where my :D is!

Best of luck.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Feel free to stop by our pit. We can gladly answer your questions, and would love to be in this book.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

The previous two books are inspiring... beautifully photographed, written, and made. They were very helpful to me when I first started FRC to understand the capabilities and level of sophistication of the robots/teams. We constantly turn to them for ideas.

We would love for you to stop by our pit in Archimedes. Here are a few stats on our 2013 robot/process.

- Resurrected an old CNC lathe and Bridgeport mill in the offseason: 44 unique (214 in total) student made parts in a mentor's garage.

- Laser cut and CNC bent sponsor made parts: 78 unique parts (512 in total)

- CNC milled sponsor made shooter/flywheels (4 parts)

- TIG welded chassis with large climb V groove down the center

- Addressable LED lights driven from the cRIO using Java SPI

- PID control using encoders, potentiometers, and gyro for shooter RPM, distance, turning, shooter angle, and blocker height.

- Limit switches and IR sensors for game piece counting

- 100% CAD modeled

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

No specific quantity of information yet. Right now we are looking for some insight on which teams we should visit while at the Championship. We don't need a complete write-up, just some highlights. As we proceed with our plans, more information will become available on submitting material for review.

The specific sections of the book haven't been defined yet. We will let everyone know as we work out more of the details. Any innovative use of software is definitely worth mentioning. We are still in the planning phase, and any novel uses of manufacturing techniquest could help to shape the chapters in the book.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Here is the response from my programming mentor Joe H:


The implementation in San Antonio (Alamo) was using the cRIO's FPGA and RT processor to implement the Bling.

The FPGA was responsible for reading back buffers of timed audio data
using DMA from the analog input channel that had a microphone
connected.

The RT processor then performed DSP on the audio to identify the power of the Bass portion of the signal (128 Hz - 32 Hz). It also used some sinusoids to slowly sweep between target colors.

Once the color was chosen for that time, the FPGA was told to change
the 3 (red, green, and blue) DIO PWM signals that were driving the 3
channels of the LED panels. The FPGA continues to generate this duty
cycle until the next color is chosen by RT.

The digital outputs have FET buffers on them to allow the PWM signal
to control the relatively high current LEDs.

Hope this helps,
-Joe

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

FIRST Team 1086: Blue Cheese would love to show you what our students have designed and built this year. You can find us in the Galileo Division.


A quick list of features:

-- Light weight "Legendairy" octocanum drive train. This earned us the Engineering Excellence Award at the Chesapeake Regional.

-- Innovative use of a double rocker arm four bar linkage.

-- Lightweight and durable sheet metal frame cut on water jet and powder coated.

-- Full student designed and created CAD model.

A quick animation that points out a few of the features.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

2046 Galileo

In house

CNC milling

3D printed parts (though not as many as intially planned to to design changes)

Done by a student at his employer/our sponsor

Water jetted polycarbonate

CNC milling

CNC lathe

We also have a laser cutter but no robot parts were made with it this year though we did use it to make buttons.

I'll second the sentiment that you must check out 1899's laser cut plywood robot, it's a thing of beauty.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Current list, for reference:


Looks like I need to schedule myself more time off to look around! ;)

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Thanks for the great suggestions and summary.

We are also be looking for control/sensor applications, as well as detailed CAD work (as well as any simulation, say for climbing or shooting mechanisms), so more leads in those areas will help as well.

We appreciate everyone's assistance finding case study leads.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

For 2468, I would add the string Potentiometer. It is probably better than the other items you list for us although the LEDs are a favorite of the students. We use the POT to adjust the angle of shooter deck as well as PID control on the shooter wheel using an optical sensor.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

I think this is a simple and effective sensor for arm and elevator applications. I know that we and 1718 have installed string pots as well, and this is 2337's second year doing so.

As for other interesting software features prevalent in FRC, the rise of using the cRIO's FTP server to send autonomous scripts that are read by the robot to quickly tune autos and then switch between them is a useful feature.

Plus, I know teams that are also using configuration files of robot constants (such as PID constants) that allow quick constants changing and, thus, tuning. It trumps having to rebuild and redeploy code every time something needs to be changed. We are utilizing both of these this year - I'd love to talk about these, or the string pot, at Championship this week.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Team 696 did some mathematical modeling of frisbee flight using Matlab if you're looking for something of the sort.

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

Team 207 prides itself on it's manufacturing. We're an official chapter of SME (society of manufacturing engineers) and thanks to that and some serious hard work, we've been doing some really cool stuff. Every part on the robot that's not from the KOP is either machined or 3D printed in house by the kids. design work is pretty insane too. These kids use Solidoworks to high-end industry levels. We were a part of the first book and would love to be a part of the next. There is a whole team component dealing with documentation of our design process as well so we have some great stuff for you to see!

Keep the Hawthorne High School of Manufacturing and Engineering in mind! We won't be at nationals this year, but we are easy to reach...

Re: FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)
 

1983 will be bringing pamphlets and paperwork in collaboration with our Water-jet sponsor OMAX.

Please stop by and grab the paperwork.

Talk to myself, or preferably ask for Liam in our pit.

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.

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.