pic: Team 254 2006 Robot 1
 

Re: pic: Team 254 2006 Robot 1
 

It's been great having your team at PNW. When it wasn't suffering from teething pains, it was great. You have a great machine, and it will be fun to see how it goes tomorrow.

Re: pic: Team 254 2006 Robot 1
 

Man that thing looks cool. I know blue is your color, but I think it would look nice in red. ;)

Re: pic: Team 254 2006 Robot 1
 

Hmmmm.

Looks different. I look foreward to seeing how she runs at SVR. From the other side this time around.

Wish you guys the best of luck!

Kerry

Re: pic: Team 254 2006 Robot 1
 

Looking at this robot, I can't help but wonder, what if it has the ball herder from the 2004 254 robot?

Makes me wonder if they might be able to make a little addition for a later regional, or the championship...

Re: pic: Team 254 2006 Robot 1
 

I must say you guys dominated the PNR quite clearly. After picking the one team that shut you down as your alliance partner I don't think there was much stopping the win. Very mechanically sound as always. It is unfortunate that you won't be attending the Sacramento Regional this year.

Re: pic: Team 254 2006 Robot 1
 

I love this design
very simple humanloading

how many balls can you carry? all of them? :D

Specs?
drive - ball capacity etc...

Re: pic: Team 254 2006 Robot 1
 

Here's a closer shot of their ball collection and manipulation mechanisms.

Re: pic: Team 254 2006 Robot 1
 

The hopper can hold around 50, although once we stick more than 20 in there, we have issues with the polycarb deflecting, and balls wedging on top of the funnel in the bottom, causing jams. Hopefully we'll have a fix figured out shortly, for SVR.

The drivetrain started with 2 FP's and 2 small CIM's, but moved to 2 CIM's only once we had a boatload of problems with the FP's. We decided we'd be better off removing them and regaining the weight for the rear roller on our frame which allows us to drive up the ramp backwards, and keep us from riding up on any balls. We knew we wouldn't be winning many pushing matches to start with, so we're fine with the tradeoff.

Our front roller picks up balls and delivers them to the hopper, as well as rolling them out into the side goals when reversed.

The rear set of conveyors delivers the ball through the back shell of the robot up to the shooter. We planned on having an aimer on the shooter hood, to adjust the angle at which the ball leaves the shooting wheel, but due to time constraints when we shipped it, it wasn't working. We also found out we didn't have the weight for it once we got to Portland. We may or may not have it back on the robot come SVR.

The shooter itself uses 2 CIM's powering a custom machined, perimeter weighted ABS wheel. By sacrificing two CIM's in the drivetrain, we were able to ensure that the shooter doesn't slow down enough to make a difference between shots.

Re: pic: Team 254 2006 Robot 1
 

It really looked like you guys had the game figured out at the PNW regional. What really impressed me (other than the whole 11 goals in five or six seconds thing) was your low centre of gravity and ability to climb the ramp at any angle while pushing and shoving with other robots around.

Jason

Re: pic: Team 254 2006 Robot 1
 

Awesome bot guys.

Why exactly are you not using the FP motors? 1072's drive is using 2 cims and 2 fps, and the drive we made team 100 is using 4 cims and 2 fp's, all with great success. Me and team 1072 are bringing up the tools to replace pinions, if you need anything done at SVR, just come on over and we'll be glad to help you guys out with this.

Re: pic: Team 254 2006 Robot 1
 

Thanks for the offer, Veselin, but I think Cory was kind of vague in his explanation of why we weren't using the FPs on Saturday of the PNW Regional. They weren't taken off the robot because of some sort of mechanical failure that we couldn't deal with. We just decided that the cost / benefit tradeoff with either having the FPs or another component on the robot (due to the 120-pound weight constraint) didn't end up in the FP's favor; so off they came. No decision has been 100% decided on for SVR, though, so we'll see what happens there.

Also, I would say that the hopper by itself can easily hold 20-25 balls, along with having ~5-8 balls in the conveyor system in a match situation.

Re: pic: Team 254 2006 Robot 1
 

we blew 3 FP motors.

1)we were drilling over the robot, and in our haste to get on the field, didn't blow the chips out of the bot. FP proceeds to catch fire.

2) We were replacing said FP, and in our haste to get back out on the field, we connected the FP leads into the conveyor. The driver had control over the conveyor, and the operator had control over the FP's, which were opposing the CIM, and got completely toasted.

3) The screws holding the FP to the AM planetary backed out, and the motor actually fell out of the gearbox. Turns out that while pulling FP motors off of spare AM planetaries, we swapped the mounting plate hardware accidentally, and ended up with screws that weren't loc-tited.

After that we took them both off the robot. By removing them we freed up weight that will hopefully allow us to keep our rear roller, add on the camera, and some other miscellaneous hardware.

Re: pic: Team 254 2006 Robot 1
 

Cory, four CI Ms won't ever stall on that robot. The FP's won't determine the winner of a pushing match, the friction applied to the ground via those 6 hot wheels will.

Re: pic: Team 254 2006 Robot 1
 

Yes, but if both bots are able to put the power to the floor (with all these traction wheels floating around, the tables are a little more even), that FP will give you a boost. Not to mention the increased efficieny in acceleration. :)