Loading Station Wall Width Concern
 

I wanted to make a small PSA about getting fuel and (mostly)gears from the loading station. More specifically for teams that are making wider robots and plan on putting a gear collector in the middle of the robot like my team is.

As everyone knows or should know, the two loading stations are on an angle in the corner of the field. This angle is not a 45 degree angle and therefore it is opposite for each alliance. For blue the angle on the left(from field) is less then the angle on the right. For red the angle on the left is less then the angle on the right. See picture or manual for clarity.

The reason I'm bringing all this up is because if your gear collector is more then ~11 inches(including bumpers, +or- 0.25in per field specs and +or- even more based on bumper "squishiness") from either side of your robot your robot will not be able to be flush against the loading station wall.

What this means is some teams will need to off set their gear collector/dispenser to one side which restricts them to one loading station which changes depending on alliance color.

Picture for clarity(dotted line represents gear slot)

Re: Loading Station Wall Width Concern
 

But remember that if you off set your gear collector to one side of your robot, you might not be lined up with the spring lift (depending on the size of your robot). If your gear collector is too far off set it might not be able to be near the spring, which is in the middle of the two barriers on the airship.

Re: Loading Station Wall Width Concern
 

I wonder if this is why we are making our gear collector as wide as the robot frame perimeter? Or is that just so we can line up with less precision, hence more quickly?

Thanks for pointing this out!

Re: Loading Station Wall Width Concern
 

Oh, now OP makes sense! Our gear intake from the slide has been as wide as the FP as long as I can remember. Most of our designs accept gears from the left and/or right sides as well.

Re: Loading Station Wall Width Concern
 

Also consider that balls may get between your bot and the wall of the loading station. So allow for a roughly 5 inch gap.

Re: Loading Station Wall Width Concern
 

That's actually WHY we want to be able to load from the sides; we think we might be able to work better in a sea of fuel. Drive practice in the sea of balls sometime soon.

Re: Loading Station Wall Width Concern
 

yeah, we also have our design planned around having the robot bumper a ball width away from the wall, while loading a gear. Early testing shows that we can easily get the ball pile down to the width of one ball.

Re: Loading Station Wall Width Concern
 

Thank you for pointing this out for those of us who might have missed this important detail.

Re: Loading Station Wall Width Concern
 

Yes, thank you for pointing that out! Can anyone tell me if the loading chutes extend past the field wall and onto the field at all? I don't see it in the Field Component drawings, however in some of the pictures it looks like the end of the chute extends onto the field a couple of inches possibly.

Re: Loading Station Wall Width Concern
 

No they don't

Re: Loading Station Wall Width Concern
 

Thanks for pointing this out, I had focused on the peg scoring area dimensions but not looked at the loading station as much.

This is also important to note. Each face of the airship is about 40" wide, the same as the max width possible in the short volume configuration, and 10" out at the tip of the peg the barriers only give about 5" of space on either side of this width. This means a max width robot that offsets the gear storage/placing area more than 5" off center of the wide side will hit the barriers when trying to place a gear straight on. This would require offset gear holders to come in at an angle, or worst case be restricted to the one peg on the side of the airship that does not have a barrier opposite their gear placing side.

Wide robots will either need to funnel gears from a wide intake down to center, or have to choose loading stations and/or pegs they are unable to use.

Re: Loading Station Wall Width Concern
 

The ramps DO extend out from the legs of the Chute Assembly (pg 163 and pg 166 of the current field drawings), but they are flush with the wall of the loading station (pg 146). If you get in good practice using a team version of the station, you will need to add a wall out at the vertical plane which includes the end of the ramp. And add a sea of balls and the side walls.

Re: Loading Station Wall Width Concern
 

This is extremely important for all teams planning on collecting gears from the loading stations :) Thank you for the heads up!

Re: Loading Station Wall Width Concern
 

Our testing showed us that if a robot doesn't clear balls first, there will be 2 smashed-together balls between the bumpers and the wall nearly all of the time. That was about 6" of gap.

If a gear was in the mix, the smallest we could make the gap was 11" using grippy-ish wheels on a 4-CIM 110lb testbed. That's about 14" to the frame perimeter...

The gap itself isn't a big deal since the excess balls & gear are probably cleared just by the incoming pathing* - thus there's likely to only be 1-deep worth of smushed balls creating a 2-3" gap. The fact that the robot can't use the wall as an alignment device if there's an unpredictable gap is a pretty big deal for some of the more simplistic designs (e.g. Ri3D & designs that can be easy Cheesecake). The WCP MCC concept deals with the gap the best, but teams will still want to work to improve upon it.

It will be interesting to re-test the gaps using these new drawings though. I forgot to account for the corners :o.

*It's kind of a big deal - the easiest path to the gear slots that clears balls basically pushed the balls closer to the opponents' boiler...