Designing a climbing mechanism for 2013... a humbling experience

[45Auto]

I guess we'll see in a couple of months!

[nicholsjj]

Originally Posted by Justin Shelley

Our team has developed a way to score 18 in auto. Up to 42 in teleop. Climb to 30. Dump 20 in top goal. It is important to remember that you can not score in the pyramid during auto. Also you can only posses 4 disc, ever. That includes when climbing and dumping!!! I predict that at championships we will see 200-300 point matches. I also predict our robot will score 110 at best and rarely bellow 68.

What Justin is saying is that we think we can successfully climb while also being able to shoot in autonomous. The 20 pt. dump is in the early stages of prototyping. I'm really excited by the team's enthusiasm this year, but realistically I am having many sleepless nights due to the vision of Thunderbolt falling from the pyramid.

I will say that this is probably the most difficult game element that I have ever heard of in FIRST (well beating 71 in Zone Zeal isn't quite a game element). I also realize that our team has developed a design that I believe will climb well. We were able to keep our shooter on Thunderbolt, but at the cost of giving up floor pick up. I would like to wish every team a successful Season in 2013, and hopefully Team 3885 can compete in St. Lou twice this year. (with a little luck)

[rocknthehawk]

I've been hitting my head against a wall trying to solve this. The pyramid is one of the most difficult elements I've tried to solve in my ten years. The size constraints, combined with the zone rules, make it extremely challenging.

Our students decided a third level climb was highest priority. I was concerned about the 2010 bot; Too much focus on the endgame, to the point we could barely score in teleop. We've had a few different concepts, with way more development than I anticipated.

With that said, we finally got our climber working. We did a proof of concept to climb to the second and touch the top bar, just need to finish our mechanism and it will be fully functioning and scoring on the 30 point bar by the weekend.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Justin Shelley

Our team has developed a way to score 18 in auto. Up to 42 in teleop. Climb to 30. Dump 20 in top goal.

Pics & Videos or it doesn't exist.

[mikegrundvig]

Our climber design has been plagued by complexities in supporting it as well as clearance problems getting it to grab bars but not touch the box on the top of the pyramid as well as having enough room to support minor alignment issues.

-Mike

[MetalJacket]

Originally Posted by mikegrundvig

Our climber design has been plagued by complexities in supporting it as well as clearance problems getting it to grab bars but not touch the box on the top of the pyramid as well as having enough room to support minor alignment issues.

-Mike

Is there a specific rule preventing you from touching the pyramid goal, or is it just something you are trying to avoid on general principles? I don't remember any rules that would make it illegal.

[mikegrundvig]

Our design uses linear rods and bearings to guide the cylinders and fix the gripping "claws" into the right position and angle. At the last stage of our climb, the rods were hitting the box on the pyramid and preventing it from climbing to it's extent. So it was less a matter of rules and more a matter of physical interference driving our decision.

We were able to fix it last night but the CAD design has had to be extremely accurate in every detail and it's taking forever. The teacher over the team was worried enough about the progress that he has some of the team building a second robot that doesn't use this design and is just a "run and gun" bot with 10 pt climb which we got working and tested yesterday as well.

-Mike

[Donut]

Originally Posted by mikegrundvig

Our design uses linear rods and bearings to guide the cylinders and fix the gripping "claws" into the right position and angle. At the last stage of our climb, the rods were hitting the box on the pyramid and preventing it from climbing to it's extent. So it was less a matter of rules and more a matter of physical interference driving our decision.

We were able to fix it last night but the CAD design has had to be extremely accurate in every detail and it's taking forever. The teacher over the team was worried enough about the progress that he has some of the team building a second robot that doesn't use this design and is just a "run and gun" bot with 10 pt climb which we got working and tested yesterday as well.

-Mike

We have a similar design and the box at the top is worrying me immensely. I don't want us to get to the top and then only get 20 points because our robot hits the box when we're an inch too low.

The GDC really thought through how to make the 30 point climb incredibly difficult.

[Michael Corsetto]

I can say with 100% confidence that I have no idea if our climbing mechanism will work. But we're building two of them!

What an awesome game!

-Mike

[dellagd]

First test done today. So far we can get to 20 points but have yet to add the final piece for the 30 points! Man, this is gonna be one fun competition to watch!

[BSEDGELEY]

Here is a video of a potential climber. It is a single purpose robot that climbs the corner of the pyramid and dump 4 discs into the basket on top to make a consistent 50 points. the key to getting the robot to climb over the crossbar joints is the use of a freewheeling star-wheel. The rotating/lifting arms provide 2 points of contact and the third point with the star-wheel should provide stability while climbing. What is not shown are the 2 retracting "V" blocks at the bottom of the robot that rest on the crossbars between climbing phases. Also a clamp to the corner upright bar would be required between climbing phases. The disc dumper could be spring loaded with a solenoid trigger release and dump the discs when the robot reaches the third level. Of course the devil is in the details...its one thing to make a little wooden model and quite another thing to make a 100+ LB robot to climb consistently in competition. I hope these ideas are helpful to some of the teams struggling with this concept. See the you-tube below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9ouR...=youtube_gdata

[NXTGeek]

Originally Posted by Jared341

The key difference is that a stinger is an 11" air cylinder pointed downwards. A 30 point climber is not quite as trivial to add to a robot with pre-existing space and weight constraints.

lol, this year you can point that cylinder upwards, add a hook and call it a 10pt climber

[Leav]

Well, seeing as this thread was revived, I just want to say that I feel ok with my initial intuition: no one came up with a really simple 30 pt. climb design that I missed, and looking back, i'm pretty sure that the 30 pt. climb really was beyond my team's reach for 2013.

[tsaksa]

I am not sure I agree. Our team built a reliable 30 point climber with almost no budget, and no manufacturing support. New they did decide to only climb, which made things a lot easier. But a method of climbing that to the top of the pyramid without being super complicated was possible.

[brrian27]

Yeah, I feel that our robot's climber is pretty simple. It's compact enough to allow a 30-point climber in conjunction with a shooter.

We hit a few roadblocks in Orlando that prevented all but one 30- point climb, but now with an updated hook I think we should be good to go with our climber. And we were versatile enough to claim some sort of climb almost every match.