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Re: pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #7
Oh wow, there are a lot of responses! I'll try to get them all, but might miss some.
We chose not to do an elevator for season because of the few "gotchas" the 254-style has. They are minimal to nonexistant to 254 clearly, as they have many iterations under their belt. But, a linear driven spooled cable elevator can be a royal pain in the arse if not done correctly. We knew arms, and knew we could make an arm much faster so we chose too. It was a though choice however, as we knew the very, very best robots would likely be elevators.
As for pics, sorry guys! No hotel at the internet I'll get them up ASAP (need to get them from the photographer).
The robot itself did poorly at this event, the code worked very well (VERY VERY well considering it's a 4wd independent power and steer swerve that's only had about 5 hours of debug time), but we were plagued by electrical failures. We used the electronics off of many old and practice robots which have been thoroughly worn. For the brief time before we loaded it in the trailer when the code worked, it drove AWESOME. We immediately learned that crabs are not 6wds and require a totally different mindset to drive.
The elevator is real slick, and we spent a lot of time on it. We chose to cascade rig it to reduce parts, and the initial gearing of driving the 2nd stage are two very light 16DP rack gears. This brings the elevator to a total weight of 23 lbs with our claw from this season (which is a very, very heavy claw). We haven't coded it yet, but it works really well when hooked to a battery and I feel we'll be very happy with it. It's near-neutrally balanced with standard constant force springs.
We didn't expect to even get this robot running for this event, with our real goal being the Madtown Throwdown in November. We'll certainly use the next 7 weeks to debug and practice and get this beast truly driving smooth.
I'll post more detailed specs of the robot when we get pictures up, and ideally start a new thread, but in summary it's a sub-40 lb independent swerve (including bolts, belly pan, battery box, etc...) which is module based (each corner has a completely self contained drive module not linked to the rest). Designed separately and then implemented at the last minute is our take on a 2-stage elevator, which was heavily influenced by 254, 971, 1114, 2415, 118 and 16 in one way or another (thanks for all the advice given at IRI), but also has some cool new concepts.
Thanks for all the support guys, a few key students and myself spent a long time designing this, and then nearly the entire team busted their butts the last few weeks to get it done. We're really happy with it so far, and plan to show up ready in November.
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