The end of week 3

[nitneylion452]

Originally Posted by CalTran

Speaking of which, I'm not entirely sure our team has decided upon a drivetrain...I know the frame is designed for 4 wheel skid, wide based, but I'm still apprehensive about going over the barrier. We did make a barrier, but they have difficulty going over it with the skid plates they added, not to mention the air we get when they do hit it full speed...

I would not recommend going over the barrier at full speed, regardless of how successful it may seem. Do this enough and something might come loose or even break. The last thing you want is to jostle something on the cRio loose and not be able to use it for the duration of the match. Not to mention the time it would take to diagnose the problem.

[wireties]

FIRST 1296 is building a a mecanum driven robot that can pull balls in from all four sides, uses a rotating double-wheeled shooter, can lower the ramp and go over the bump (carefully). Everything is prototyped and we think it will work.

We are a few days behind - had to wait longer than normal for some fabricated parts from our sponsor. But the robot will be driving this weekend. The ball gatherer and feeder will get built early next week and the shooter the next week. So we are on target to get a full week of practice and tuning the performance of the robot.

Now if all the parts will come in on time...

[MysterE]

I think we are generally on schedule. . . I say generally only. We are currently building the practice-bot frame, have our practice-bot shooter built, and are finishing up our flux-capacitor. The programmers are having a hard time finding out how to get the robot to 88 mph before the barrier though.

[MichaelBick]

Originally Posted by CalTran

Boy can I relate to the noncompetitiveness of a team...our team is usually good, and we're going to get a decent 'bot out there at KC, but at the same time, I wish that the team would strive to compete up there alongside Bomb Squad and Team Titanium and Winnovation.
It made me really sad when I told someone on our team about something 1717 does, only to recieve back "Are we Team 1717? No, we're 2410." I know that we're not d'Penguineers, but that still doesn't mean we can't emulate what an award winning team does. (The reference in question was how d'Penguineers tweak their practice bot, and fabricate their competition bot only when they're absolutely sure about what works and what doesnt. -Reference from The New Cool- because our team rushed through prototyping and straight to metal fabrication. This arised because I asked our shooter team if they had tested everything and they said "No, but our metal shooter will be modular so we can continue testing.)

I say the same thing to my team, and get the same response. As the CADder, I try to integrate some their ideas into our design process, but I believe that the best team to emulate is 254. They always have an effective simple(r) design, that I believe should be all team's way of thinking when they're designing, unless they have the resources of teams like 1717.

[ayeckley]

We're generally on shedule, but the real problem we're dealing with is the availability of gearboxes and gearbox parts. We've had a drive base for several days now, but we're headed for a spot between a rock and a hard place because we have no real way to use F-P or RS-550 motors at this point. We're having to cannabalize old robots, not because we can't afford new gearboxes but simply because nobody has what we need in stock.

I predict 2012 will be remembered as "the year of lots of motors and no gearboxes".

[Squeakypig]

Our team also has a small design team. Our major put back right now is continuous prototyping. As soon as we decide on something, we think of a problem that can happen and have to fix it in a prototype before we can finalize that design. Our drive train is set, pieces cut ready to be welded, design is close to being done (yet still behind schedule). We planned out our weeks to have about a week of practice time with our bot until bag day, so any progress we get behind on will only take away practice time (still vital to the team, not as vital as a working bot is to the team)

[JamesCH95]

All of our concepts have been proven, now we just need to stick it all together. And we've got a snow day today. I hope we'll be mostly together and driving by the end of week 4. *crosses fingers*

[coldfusion1279]

1279 is having its most efficient year ever. All thanks to a new sponsor...

Still not near finished though. Good luck everyone.

[Alpha Beta]

Originally Posted by CalTran

our team is usually good, and we're going to get a decent 'bot out there at KC, but at the same time, I wish that the team would strive to compete up there alongside Bomb Squad and Team Titanium and Winnovation.

2410 is always on our preseason watch list of excellent teams in the KC area.

While I'd love to say we designed it in the first 3 days and have been moving towards the polished product ever since... We've had our set backs with rule reinterpretations, misalligned parts, enginneering break throughs that require major redesigns, and inoportune illnesses from key members. One subsystems hasn't made it to CAD yet, and a second one is still looking for the right design concept. These things are not totally unexpected, so no panic just the constant pressure to fail faster. We'll be fine.

The drive base is built, finished wiring it last night, and should be driving it around today after school. Parts are mostly in house for the ball intake and delivery system. Prototypes all appear to function within our design perameters.

Software team found last year's robot to have a lot of similar functionality to this year's requirements and have turned it into a test bed for working out the kinks in code. We'll see how it translates to the smaller (faster) CRIO.

We're on schedule, but we wanted to be ahead, so it feels like we are behind.

[Otto.KARS]

[quote=CalTran;1114520]Boy can I relate to the noncompetitiveness of a team...our team is usually good, and we're going to get a decent 'bot out there at KC, but at the same time, I wish that the team would strive to compete up there alongside Bomb Squad and Team Titanium and Winnovation.

I know what you mean. Team 2345 has been striving for the same competitiveness. Usually our team creates a simple, yet effective, robot. This year we have upped the complexity. Overall, the team is on schedule. The build team is a little behind (we just finished our full frame). Programmers have several "pilot" codes for every function on the robot, and we are currently working towards target tracking.

I cannot wait to meet you guys (Metal Mustangs and Titanium) at KC.

[JesseK]

We're further ahead than we've ever been in 7 seasons, but still not ahead of schedule. We're on target to deliver to the programmers at the start of Week 5 though. We will probably be able to do a launch party and video too (woohoo!) with the basic stuff running.

- CAD -- done (mostly)
- Full frame is 95% welded, done in-house last night.
- Special parts are cut, just need them delivered.
- Final part orders are on their way (except BB-550's, need to order extras)
- Just need to cut the rollers for the conveyor, and make sure we have enough gator clips for the belting.
- Oh yea -- bridge lowering device -- maybe finally designed? Need to talk to the student in charge tomorrow. Have a concept, a spot, and a plan for it, just need the details done.
- Assembly starts at dawn tomorrow, disassembly for powder coating starts at dusk. (I'm going for some black accents this year, Woo!)
- Reassembly Thursday, Electronics Saturday
- Final assembly & delivery to programmers Saturday.
- Then we work on bumpers, paneling, shrouds, labels, and other 'prettifying' effects.

Oh yea, and the hardest part: we have to name the durn thing. Want to see a group of engineers' moment of greatest indecision? Get them to agree on a name.

[NullEntity]

Originally Posted by BeltSanderRocks

We're behind, but hey, that's the fun of build season right? Assembling that robot during that last caffeine powered weekend...

Or worse, redesigning during that last weekend.

[Alan Anderson]

The TechnoKats have been really really productive this year. We have had four robots driving on the practice field this week, and a fifth is mechanically complete and mostly wired. Even though our wooden bridge is way too light with a balance "sweet spot" that's much too small, one student driver has shown a real talent for driving and balancing. A couple of competent and dedicated student programmers are working with the practice drive base from 2007 and the prototype swerve system, and we have successfully implemented vision processing on the Classmate and bidirectional data communication between the robot and the Dashboard.

This year's intended competition robot, however, is mostly pixels so far. I will be very surprised if enough parts are fabricated and assembled to drive it by the end of the month.

[klmx30302]

Team 166 is doing better time wise then last year but we are still slightly behind schedule.

We've had the frame constructed since last Saturday but haven't really touched it since, but we got several parts made last night ready to go on.
The frame for the shooter is done and waiting for axels and wheels.

We have most of the parts to put together the drive train (waiting on 2 CIMple transmissions). And last night we got our order of CIMulators and rs 550's.
We are currently working out some issues with our bridge manipulator but they should be solved by tonight or tomorrow.

[Grim Tuesday]

We are pretty far behind: Our frame is being water jetted and will arrive next Wednesday. Our new extra-sticky awesome treads should be coming in a few days later. The hope is, once the pieces get here and are put together, we can slap on our shooter, electronics, and acquisition system and get to the empirical programming testing. I could see us having a driving robot a week from now.

Oh yeah, we're waiting on Banebots RS550's for our shooter. We're putting 4 on there with 2 double doozys. I don't understand how BB takes 6 days to put motors into a box.