pic: Team 971's Robot
 

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

looks like a pretty popular design this year! Great job, beautiful robot. Can't wait to see it play at SVR!

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

A solid design that has been proven to work very well. Well done!!! See you at Silicon Valley Regional!

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

Wow. Looks like a really nice and clean bot from across the district. Hope you guys do well!

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

I think we can now call this the west coast arm, I've seen a bunch of these 254/968/22 arms from 2004/5 being used this year. They are all look amazing, and I'm sure will function really well. Oh and you also have the west coast drive on there too. You have a proven arm and drive design there with a very unique manipulator.

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

Do you fit within the base parameters of 28"x38"?

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

are your wheels covered?

it doesn't look that way

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

The wheels are not covered, but there are bumpers that go on outboard of them.

oh, and let's not forget that Team 60 was also part of the original troupe that pioneered this style arm back on 04

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

We do. We even designed in clearance. We are 27.5x37, instead of 28x38 like last year.

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

It was actually way back in 2001. I can't recall their 00 bot off the top of my head, but it may have had some of the same design traits too.

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

so it would appear that Team 60 is at least partly responsible for both "west coast drive" and the newly dubbed "west coast arm". Quite the influential (and successful) team

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

Yup, Team 60's 2000 bot had a very similar arm back then as well, painted in the very famous yellow and blue... That arm had a basket on the end of it, with a "spine" down the back for hanging on the bar. I seem to remember it being only 2wd however... I'm sure there are pics of it somewhere out there.

Back to this specific robot, you obviously have a lot of manufacturing capability. Welding, sheetmetal, laser/watter cutting... Do you share these capabilities with other teams in the area? (Sorry, I don't know much about your teams' history, or location for that matter.) I'm very jealous! :)

Nice.

BEN

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

60 is fully responsible for the arm. It was refined by the aforementioned teams, but the underlying structure from it is entirely 60's brainchild.

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

The machining is entirely donated by Berger Manufacturing of Santa Clara, who also sponsors Team 649 of Saratoga High School, and by a team mentor, Dave. This is the first year the team has had a full season with these capabilities.

Berger is primarily sheet metal, but they also did the welding

Dave made most of the non-sheet parts, including the shifting transmissions and the wheels

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

To add to what Evan posted, all of the axles and a fair amount of the aluminum parts were made on a manual mill and lathe. All of the axles in the transmissions started from hex stock bought from McMaster Carr. Dave worked miracles. We cut the tube aluminum on a horizontal band saw. Berger Manufacturing welded everything up, cut a few holes in the tube aluminum, and cut out the sheet metal parts using their laser cutter. We bought hex broached gears from AndyMark, and used the AndyMark dog from the spare parts for their transmissions. We used 254's hex broach for our wheels and some of the gears.

In case you thought otherwise, those neat wheels were cut out on a manual mill and lathe.

Quite a dramatic change from last year's robot, which was built using a drill press and the horizontal band saw.

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

Does it bother you that this will be the first year (in quite some time) that 254/968 has decided NOT to use this design?

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

Give credit where it is due; this design was developed by team 60 in 2000 (hints of it) and fully in 2001. They used it in '04 with 254 and in '05. 22,254 and 968 (seperate from 22 and 254 i believe) used it in '05 as well.

Just out of curiousity... How did you come about this design?

My team used it this year halfway based on drawings from when we did it in 2004.

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

I am not worried. This design may not be the best one out there, but it definately works well. They believe that they have a better design than the arm, and I want to see what they think is any better. If we get time, I want to write some code that changes the control from changing the angle of the joints to changing the position in the xy plane of the arm. I believe that they didn't like the way that the arm is not able to lift in a strait line without a very skilled driver.

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

We started fully from scratch this year. It took me 2 days to draw the claw, and then another day to draw the entire arm. The arm gearboxes then took another ~2 days. I frequented team254.bcp.org often, but only used their design as inspiration, not something to dirrectly copy. We went over to 254's lab, and they reviewed our design themselves.

Re: pic: Team 971's Robot
 

Looks very good--I love how you kept the pneumatics nicely tied up and fairly protected. That's one thing I've seen missing a lot in the robots that use pneumatics; it looks scarily easy to get tangled up in a pneumatic hose when in close proximity with these robots.

Make sure those bumpers are extremely solidly mounted, though--you wouldn't want a robot hitting one of your bumpers and knocking it loose into a wheel!