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Unread 03-17-2016, 01:55 AM
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Tom Line Tom Line is offline
Raptors can't turn doorknobs.
FRC #1718 (The Fighting Pi)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Rookie Year: 1999
Location: Armada, Michigan
Posts: 2,509
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Re: Rethinking the Low bar

We'd keep it.

Like many lower numbered teams, we've had a lot of experience shooting balls. We took those lessons learned and incorporated them since day 1 and we were confident we could make it work.

It was a huge challenge for us to package everything. I hate some of the compromises we made in the wiring of this robot. We had no dedicated electronics area so everything ended up where it fit. That doesn't make for the cleanest layout.

We are still working on some of the trade offs. We have far too few pneumatic tanks and our compressor runs too much. At this point we have no more space, so we're going to live with that. That was the result of a late design decision after we had already calculated and committed to our tank capacity and mounting points - we were shocked to find the robot goes over the obstacles much easier with our arm in the up position (a higher center of gravity). Moving our large arm takes a lot of air.

We went with a near-sheet metal chassis (our first) to maximize space on the inside of the robot. That was a compromise that resulted in a chassis that is far more flexible than we expected. But as long as the welds hold we don't care .

It's resulted in the moving of our camera twice, our flashlight twice, and numerous rewiring jobs as we look for that extra inch of space.

We've gone from long cylinders to pancake cylinders on our AM PTO, and that's caused us a couple headaches re-engineering the connection points twice so that they don't unscrew themselves.

It's been fun!
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