pic: Team 228 in VEX: Part 2

[artdutra04]

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[Adam Richards]

So how tall is it overall?

[Conor Ryan]

awesome I love it, the tetras look awesome, its a complete robot and one of the best VEX robots I've seen. I'm doubting that you have the photoshop skills to make it that awesome, so you must be an awesome builder. Can you eleborate on the maniupulator/arm extension mechanism?

[Michael Leicht]

that beats JVN robots.

my hero of vex for the moment.

just shocked.

great job.

take a pic of just your robot. that looks amazing.

[artdutra04]

Thanks for the nice comments! This is my second Vex robot, my WPI Frontiers one being the first. I just filmed the robot in action in my kitchen and posted the video on my team's website. Here is the link: (2.9 Mb)

http://www.team228.org/index/multime...exrobot_01.wmv

If you want to read more about what I have done with Vex, see my White Paper - Cost Effective Robotics: Using Vex in FRC.


EDIT: The robot starts out almost exactly 1:3 scale of the full-size Team 228 FRC robot. The dimensions of the Vex robot are 12.5" long by 9.5" wide by 20" tall. When fully extended, the robot reaches 42.5" tall, high enough to stack up to eight tetras on my exactly 1:3 scale center goal.

Also, if anyone else from the Connecticut area would like to build a mini-FRC Vex robot, bring it to Bash at the Beach. I will bring mine there along with some mini tetras and two or three mini goals.


Some of the mini-playing field pieces.


The arm gearbox and the elevator gearbox.


Here is an up close picture of the drivetrain of the robot. The chain going up is connected to the elevator.


Here is a picture of the front of the elevator gearbox. I used a continuous loop of the Vex chain to power the elevator, which works very well.

[Greg Marra]

Hmm, I did see the VEX robot driving around BattleCry. I think I talked to a mentor on your team about it too.

[JVN]

Art,
Very cool! I passed your whitepaper and that video around the office down here and we were all quite impressed. I can't wait to see what you come up with next!

Kudos to you!

Take Care,
JV

[artdutra04]

Wow, thanks for the nice comments. Sorry, but I probably won't be building anything new for at least a month, at least not until after Bash at the Beach. But I did find another great use for my Vex robot recently. All the incoming freshmen that were thinking of joining the team this year were amazed by the robot, and loved driving it and stacking mini tetras on the mini goals. Most of them seemed like they really want to do robotics now, because they were able to drive a robot at the first meeting.