Hey guys!! So this is my rookie year as a freshman and my team's first year, and I don't really know the FRC community that well, but here's my team'
s first attempt to really innovate and create the best possible design for this year's game: Stronghold. So here is the 5th iteration of our design that we're about to send to our sponsor's shop to get fabricated. We've already bought a 4ftx4ftx4in. block of carbon-fiber reinforced balsa that we plan to waterjet. The outer wall is a 4in high wall while the inside is 1in thick. We put cut outs were we could to reduce weight in the drivetrain. The drivetrain weight is 10.226 lbs. This innovative drivetrain makes use of our electronics to power the movement of the drivetrain. We received a large donation of parts as a rookie from an older team, and a large portion of them were old electronics. We decided to be economical, because we only have 2 sponsors right now. 1 being 7eleven and the other being an anonymous machine shop sponsor. Because of our low budget we could only obtain low-cost parts, hence the balsa and old electronics. These constraints lead us to think up a very innovative design
. We have decided to mount the victor 888 motor controllers donated to us on the bottom of drivetrain, so that the blowing force from the fans can make the carbon reinforced balsa wood drivetrain hover above the ground. We found hovering to be the best possible method of overcoming the rocky terrain defenses because we would not have to sacrifice speed and time to traverse the rocky terrain like robots contacting the floor with wheels or treads would.We can now hover at a height of 2in. and hover across the field at a speed of 0.0113559 nautical miles/second. The drivetrain also only weights 10.226 lbs.
. To hover we reversed the wiring so that the fan would spin back wards and would put a downward force on the floor. We also coded the victor motor controllers to spin 21.96969 times the speed they normally do to create a stronger fan propulsion source. To do this we had to replace the motors inside the fans with more powerful ones. We're really proud to present this design to the robotics community in hopes of ways to figure out how to improve this current design. We look forward to the hard fun with other teams and hope to see you at orange county regional (March 30 - April 2, 2016) and the st. louis championships!!!
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