pic: The Bobcat 2011
 

Re: pic: The Bobcat 2011
 

I am curious how your lift works, it almost looks like a lift / telescoping hybrid. can you post a CAD file?

Re: pic: The Bobcat 2011
 

I'll check with the students at our next meeting to see if they still hve the CAD files.

The lift design is based on our classic telescoping arm slider design we've used since 97.

Re: pic: The Bobcat 2011
 

Is the vertical lift a single stage or two? It looks a lot like a single stage, but I never got around to checking.

Fantastic robot this year. If we had the resources, I wouldn't be surprised if we used the same concept this year.

Re: pic: The Bobcat 2011
 

It's single stage. We didn't want to mess with multi stage complications.

This is part of how we came up with the idea to have the claw extend pneumatically so we had the extra reach we needed, and it kept the arm short to make it easier for the drivers to adjust while hanging and minimize arm sway.

Re: pic: The Bobcat 2011
 

Beautiful, solid robot. One of my favorites, I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to have a close look at champs. Looking forward to what you come up with next year.

-Nick

Re: pic: The Bobcat 2011
 

This robot is too good to get to Einstein.

Re: pic: The Bobcat 2011
 

Even considering all of 177's success in the past few years, I'd still go as far as to say that this is the best robot they have built...

Re: pic: The Bobcat 2011
 

Haha. I'm glad we finally had a chance to play some matches together this year.

This is by far my favorite of the 9 I've worked on, even though we've had other robots that brought home more wins.

Re: pic: The Bobcat 2011
 

It was fun to watch the subtle changes that took place on this robot from Shakedown to WPI to CT to St. Louis. 177 is definitely a team that never stops working, as far as I can tell.

Working with you guys at Shakedown as a driver was one of my favorite moments of this season. I can distinctly remember the crash we all felt on the opposite side of the driver station when the 177 machine rammed into the rack during auton.

Funny to think 177 went from having an elevator that didn't go up and down and no minibot at all at Shakedown, to one of the fastest tube scoring and minibot launching teams in the world at St Louis.

Re: pic: The Bobcat 2011
 

Are you able to join the flat urethane belting without using whatever special kit McMaster recommends? When we use round urethane belting, we just heat it over a heat gun and mash the malleable ends together, then grind the flashing off. This is very easy and doesn't require anything particularly expensive.

I'd like to play around with the flat belts some, though, if they're similarly easy to work with.

Did you just let the belts wander back and forth on the drums? Any problems with them riding up on one another?

Re: pic: The Bobcat 2011
 

This robot can also do pullups. :p

(CT Regional Reference)

Re: pic: The Bobcat 2011
 

To be honest the elevator worked but it was so fast and the limit switches weren't working so we just didn't use it and acted like it didn't work.

As for the mini-bot we didn't want to tip our hand at the scrimmage and give everone a jump on copying our design by week 1. In the end we scrapped the design we had at the time, and in the week leading to WPI we got our sheetmetal minbot working. Also our last minbot we used at the campionship was in final configuration on Friday afternoon at championship

All good questions:
We have done the same thing with round belts for years and the flat belt is very similar. With some practice you get it almost perfect without the tools.

We actually just let the belts ride around on the drums they would wander abit but we also after a short time figured out how each belt wanted to walk and used it to our advantage to place them. They would occasionally pile up and need to be straightened out but it was never and issue because they still always grabbed the tubes.

We actually looked for the field we did that on at championships because one of the pegs was deformed by that event...

Re: pic: The Bobcat 2011
 

This is one of my 5 favorite robots of all-time. You guys had an amazing season this year and I enjoyed working with you guys in WPI and CT. Will next year make it 7 in a row?