Team 1658 FRC 2015 First day of practice 6 totes+container x2

[sanelss]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRNc...ature=youtu.be

[Torrance]

I really like the way you use a simple bottom roller to intake cans, straighten misaligned totes, and exhaust the stack from your elevator in a very smooth and controlled motion.

Other than the fact that the drivetrain look a bit fast for the distance you're planning on driving, I really like the rest of the design.

[sanelss]

Originally Posted by Torrance

I really like the way you use a simple bottom roller to intake cans, straighten misaligned totes, and exhaust the stack from your elevator in a very smooth and controlled motion.

Other than the fact that the drivetrain look a bit fast for the distance you're planning on driving, I really like the rest of the design.

yes it is indeed too fast. we can either limit speed in software or change out the transmission gearing to be 16:1 instead of the current 12:1

this is the first day of practice so we can still do a fair bit of tweaking as we see how it performs

[Jared Russell]

Nice job!

I loved your 3 ball auto last year, and it looks like you have a solid robot once again.

[SenorZ]

VERY happy to see someone else doing an "internal" stack. Seen plenty of cool external forklifts so far.

[sanelss]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

Nice job!

I loved your 3 ball auto last year, and it looks like you have a solid robot once again.

we can only hope we don't run into major issues during competition! this year we will also be attempting a very high auto score by ourselves. We won't get it every time, but we'll try!

[bEdhEd]

Very similar to one of our initial ideas, but we opted for totes outside of the bot instead of inside, for simplicity's sake. Really great job. You guys will make for a stable and reliable 6 stacker.

[sanelss]

Originally Posted by bEdhEd

Very similar to one of our initial ideas, but we opted for totes outside of the bot instead of inside, for simplicity's sake. Really great job. You guys will make for a stable and reliable 6 stacker.

the funny thing is, we can still stack on outside as well. those swinging arms allow us to stack totes externally, it's just more efficient to suck them in

[Ryan Dognaux]

Killer robot guys. Looking forward to playing with you at SLU and seeing this one in person.

[eedoga]

Robots like these...

I see them and then smack my forehead... Simple...efficient...effective...Amazing.

Great job guys!

Edoga

[D_Price]

Very very efficient and ingenious extract of totes onto the platform. Not much room for tipping (unless of course your alliance partners nudge that stack). Looking forward to seeing it in action!

[sanelss]

Originally Posted by D_Price

Very very efficient and ingenious extract of totes onto the platform. Not much room for tipping (unless of course your alliance partners nudge that stack). Looking forward to seeing it in action!

well unless the direction they nudge it in just happens to be on the exact opposite direction, it'll be fine. It's not done in this video but we can nudge it ourselves further onto the step to make it more stable and if falling stacks become an issue we will indeed do this. It just wasn't done in the video since it takes a few seconds more and we want to make runs as short as we can.

[dodar]

I take it from the video, you can also stack RCs in a horizontal position as well?

[sanelss]

Originally Posted by dodar

I take it from the video, you can also stack RCs in a horizontal position as well?

possibly. we haven't tried it though.

[sanelss]

Originally Posted by eedoga

Robots like these...

I see them and then smack my forehead... Simple...efficient...effective...Amazing.

Great job guys!

Edoga

ye it ended up being much simpler than the initial designs as we iterated. that roller was originally an entire conveyor belt system, but as we did some testing we noticed it was completely unnecessary so we ditched everything but the front roller. the external swinging fingers where going to be an entirely different system that would laso the game pieces but again through iteration and testing this system was also reduced to be as minimal as it is.

However, we did end up making one system much more complicated than original designs, and that was the flappers that drop down to grab the ledge of the totes to pick them up. We tried a passive approach initially like many other teams with bent poly-carbonate but weren't satisfied with stability of picking up a stack so this turned into a rather complex system we had to iterate on a few times and tweak to make work properly. There is a passive reset for them and we use servos(as you can see in the video if you look closely) to activate them. It's more complex than I would like but it seems to be working perfectly without any issue every single time so i'm not worried about it anymore.