Team 95 Hard At Work - 2015

[JamesCH95]

Since a number of people enjoyed our thread last year, here it is again for 2015: Team 95, the Grashoppers, fabricating parts!

Thusfar we have a number of chassis side-plates blanked out on our CNC plasma cutter:


Hello little kitty!

A close-up of the various surface finishes we've tried out so far:


I think this is the biggest chunk of metal I've ordered for FRC:

[JamesCH95]

With CAD nearly finalized on most of the robot we have started making chassis and drive parts in earnest. #10AWG aluminum sheet is our material of choice for these parts.

Keeping the plasma cutter busy.

[JamesCH95]

And the Prototrak is kept busy with final machining operations on the plasma-cut blanks.






And the lathe. Here we are using the tail stock to help broach some delrin tubes.

[Nathan Streeter]

Looking good! We're looking forward to playing with you guys in Nashua.

Looks like a cribbage board had been made on the Prototrak?

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

Looking good! We're looking forward to playing with you guys in Nashua.

Looks like a cribbage board had been made on the Prototrak?

Thanks! We are as well.

Bring your cards and pegs, we'll play cribbage on the robot while we wait for eliminations matches! I swear we'll be on the same alliance one of these years... I still regret not picking you guys in 2012 when we had the chance.

The hole patterns are for the chassis style we've adopted - plates and standoffs, like last year's robot. It plays well to our strengths, i.e. plasma cutter and Prototrak and has proved to be elegant and robust.

[Nathan Streeter]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

Thanks! We are as well.

Bring your cards and pegs, we'll play cribbage on the robot while we wait for eliminations matches! I swear we'll be on the same alliance one of these years... I still regret not picking you guys in 2012 when we had the chance.

The hole patterns are for the chassis style we've adopted - plates and standoffs, like last year's robot. It plays well to our strengths, i.e. plasma cutter and Prototrak and has proved to be elegant and robust.

I'm all for teams picking a set of build methods based off their fabrication strengths... we certainly have picked the way we build based off our available resources! That said, I meant less the spiffy-looking robot parts and more the piece of sacrificial wood on the Prototrak in the first picture... :-)

That said, a few hands of cribbage between matches sounds like a good idea!

GSR 2012 was a bizarre event for us... though I'm in way complaining about the finalist showing. I certainly couldn't criticize anyone above us for not picking us though, as we were anything but an offensive juggernaut at GSR! We were just glad to be able to be able to assemble an alliance that made it to the finals!

[who716]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

Thanks! We are as well.

Bring your cards and pegs, we'll play cribbage on the robot while we wait for eliminations matches! I swear we'll be on the same alliance one of these years... I still regret not picking you guys in 2012 when we had the chance.

The hole patterns are for the chassis style we've adopted - plates and standoffs, like last year's robot. It plays well to our strengths, i.e. plasma cutter and Prototrak and has proved to be elegant and robust.

lol

[StevenB]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

Bring your cards and pegs, we'll play cribbage on the robot while we wait for eliminations matches! I swear we'll be on the same alliance one of these years...

Hehe, this was the year!

Thanks for sharing. It's always cool to see another team's design and manufacturing process, especially on a machine as nicely built as yours.

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

Fantastic work this weekend 95! It was mesmerizing watching your robot move seamlessly around the field scoring cans with that elegant arm. The Engineering Excellence award was well earned as that is a beautiful machine and performs well on the field.

Thanks Brendan! Your comments are much appreciated.

Originally Posted by StevenB

Hehe, this was the year!

Thanks for sharing. It's always cool to see another team's design and manufacturing process, especially on a machine as nicely built as yours.

Indeed! 1519 and 1307 were both great teams to work with.

You are welcome, and thank you for the compliment. I hope to have even further updates to this thread in the next few days. Always something else to improve...

[MooreteP]

Grasshoppers are one of the weirder teams in FIRST.
I mean that as a compliment.
Your team inspired my team in 2004.
Winning with a wastebasket in Ultimate Ascent.

I see a whole lotta love in your fabrication pics.

What unique strategy do you have in store this year?

Hope to see you at the NEDCMP.

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by MooreteP

Grasshoppers are one of the weirder teams in FIRST.
I mean that as a compliment.
Your team inspired my team in 2004.
Winning with a wastebasket in Ultimate Ascent.

I see a whole lotta love in your fabrication pics.

What unique strategy do you have in store this year?

Hope to see you at the NEDCMP.

Thanks! We like getting called weird and unique.

I must extend a belated Thank You for the creativity award you gave us a Hartford last season. Your award (more so than the official creativity award) made the event for one of our rookie students - he kept it on his lap for the whole drive back, and only begrudging put it on the shelf in our build space.

Our strategy this year prioritizes getting the recycling cans quickly, giving our alliance partners easy access to them, and scoring the cans on stacks up to 5-6 tall. With a dash of making 2-wide-by-3-tall stacks in there. We figure a typical Ri3D robot can quickly make a stack of 6 totes from two stacks of 3 totes, plus all the landfill totes are laid out in twos...

We hope to see you at NEDCMP as well! We were very close to making it last year, hopefully a little more success this year will get us in!

[jwfoss]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

Parts are looking great guys.
Who's Austin/Morris Mini is that there in the background?

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by jwfoss

Parts are looking great guys.
Who's Austin/Morris Mini is that there in the background?

Thanks!

The Mini is being completely rebuilt by the shop's class (Industrial Mechanics and Welding) and is owned by the shop's instructor. When I say 'completely rebuilt' I mean we have head to clear connecting rods off the work bench to get some space!

[JamesCH95]

Obligatory plasma cutting video of some of our chassis plates.

-0.100/#10awg aluminum sheet
-45A w/ 45A fine-cut consumables on a Hypertherm Powermax 85A power supply
-100ipm travel (table is not stiff enough to go faster, unfortunately) on Norther Plasma table and controllers.

Video here.

[JamesCH95]

Progress!

We finished assembling, greasing, and burning-in most of our transmissions.



We also experimented with Pem Nuts in our continuing effort to use only blind fasteners without tapping any material. Most methods worked well at setting the Pem Nuts, aside from the hammer. Also pictured is one of the 12V Rigid impact drivers that we recently acquired. We really like them and their 12V drill companions.



We also assembled a drive module! 6in AM mecanum wheels direct-driven from a single-speed double-reduction Vex transmission. The shaft is not cantilevered, but supported by a bearing in the outer plate. Free speed is a little higher than I'd like at 14ft/s, but I felt this was a reasonable compromise to use virtually all OTS parts, especially with the ability to throw 4 mini-CIMs into the drive to up the drive's performance. As-pictured it weighs around 18-19lbs.


The drive pod also fits the battery quite nicely, which will serve as a counter-balance for our arm. We will be relying on closed-loop control on the mecanum wheels to account for the inevitable CG variances.