Constant Improvement: Team 3539 competes at Troy

[Joseph Smith]

Here is a bit of footage of The Byting Bulldogs' robot, Consuela, competing at Troy. Between Waterford and Troy, we made some noticeable and valuable improvements.

a. Fixed magazine jamming. We replaced the L-channel in our magazine with c-channel to better slot the frisbees and prevent jams. We didn't have a single magazine jam at Troy.
b. Improved hanging hooks. We added extensions to our hooks to improve our hanging consistency. We made every attempted hang but one, but that was an unrelated issue.
c. Improved autonomous. We modified the intake slightly to allow a wider pickup, allowing us to pursue a seven-disc auton to considerable success.

That being said, the journey is far from over. We have more changes to make at States- hopefully changes that will improve our shooting speed and consistency, and give us a certain measure of insurance if we lose intake function.

Good luck to all teams and see you at states!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnDLFystS1Y

[Akash Rastogi]

One of my favorite robots so far.


Also, great song choice

[Michael Corsetto]

Love the autonomous routine! Good luck at MSC!

-Mike

[Grim Tuesday]

Wow, a pleasure to watch. MSC is shaping up to be even more competitive than last year!

[NotaJoke]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

Wow, a pleasure to watch. MSC is shaping up to be even more competitive than last year!

Way more competitive. A few of the best are having an off year, and everyone else is itching (and armed!) to take their places.

This robot will make a huge splash at MSC, and then CMP. Can't wait to see how things turn out. Good luck!

[Joseph Smith]

Thanks we're all excited with our progress so far.

Speaking on the "constant improvement" topic, we learned a few things at Troy, too.

a. Our intake doesn't like being driven into the seams in the carpet in the lowered position. Fortunately, we had spare ramps, but we'll be working on something new.
b. Our failure point on our tower is the aluminum spur gear that drives the rotation. If teeth are skipped, everything is thrown out of whack.
c. The pneumatic tire that we use for shooting leaks slowly when spun at high speeds. Also, the valve stem has a habit of getting sucked into the rim of the wheel. Naturally, this happened just before finals, so we didn't have time to fix it and our shooting suffered.

We're hoping to have all of these issues resolved for MSC. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the robot is never truly finished.