FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)

[Coach Norm]

FRC 2468 Team Appreciate is in Archimedes this year.

We utilized a 3d Printer for about 20 parts on the robot. The one item that is most interesting is the string potentiometer we printed the parts for and made. This item provides us feedback on the deck angle of our shooter so we can shoot from anywhere on the field. We have gone thru 4 or 5 iterations of the final design. An equivalent item would cost in the range of $150 - $400 and we produced for considerably less than that. BTW, we received our 3D printer during week 4 of the build season.

LED lights on the robot that responsive to the sounds in the stadium. They flash and turn colors with the beat of the music. The LED panels were custom made and utilized a feature of the CRio that is not used by many.


Our shooter is made of HDPE deck with a custom made HDPE wheel and HDPE hopper/Jason' Deli Pickle bucket and rail system. All custom made on a CNC flatbed machine after prototypes we made. Shooter has vision control and PID to assist in shot selection, robot alignment and control. The shooter is mounted on a sheet-metal frame that was designed in SolidWorks and sent out be waterjet cut and bent for the robot.

Please come by our pit in Archimedes for more information, visual inspection and demonstration of the above items.

Norman

[Jaxom]

Originally Posted by Coach Norm

LED lights on the robot that responsive to the sounds in the stadium. They flash and turn colors with the beat of the music. The LED panels were custom made and utilized a feature of the CRio that is not used by many.

Could you share which CRio feature this is?

[s_forbes]

We used a manual mill and manual lathe to build most of the parts of our robot, as well as a water-jetting sponsor for important yet obscure parts (transmission plates/brackets, funny shaped gears). Lots and lots of iterative CAD modeling and packaging went into the design of our climbing mechanism, but that is a process that is not easy to document!

[Turtleinator]

Team 1816 The Green Machine in Curie has cool stuff for you to see!

Our robot this year utilizes, and won the rockwell automation inovation in control award for:
-3D printed "augers" (helixes) That hold and index frisbees when in a triangular pattern.
-Ornate water jetted baseplate for the frame of the shooter.
-Fully automated vision control system with point and shoot accuracy.
-Fully CAD-ed robot
-3D models with moving parts to show off the robot.

Come to our pit and any of our team members can give you more detailed information, or ask for Kevin. You can also look at our website www.edinarobotics.com for a picture of the robot.

[friskywombat]

Originally Posted by Jaxom

Could you share which CRio feature this is?

We use the DI/O ports of the sidecar, one each for red, green, and blue, and a custom circuit for the LEDs.

[Coach Norm]

Originally Posted by Jaxom

Could you share which CRio feature this is?

Here is the response from my programming mentor Joe H:


The implementation in San Antonio (Alamo) was using the cRIO's FPGA and RT processor to implement the Bling.

The FPGA was responsible for reading back buffers of timed audio data
using DMA from the analog input channel that had a microphone
connected.

The RT processor then performed DSP on the audio to identify the power of the Bass portion of the signal (128 Hz - 32 Hz). It also used some sinusoids to slowly sweep between target colors.

Once the color was chosen for that time, the FPGA was told to change
the 3 (red, green, and blue) DIO PWM signals that were driving the 3
channels of the LED panels. The FPGA continues to generate this duty
cycle until the next color is chosen by RT.

The digital outputs have FET buffers on them to allow the PWM signal
to control the relatively high current LEDs.

Hope this helps,
-Joe

[wilsonmw04]

FIRST Team 1086: Blue Cheese would love to show you what our students have designed and built this year. You can find us in the Galileo Division.


A quick list of features:

-- Light weight "Legendairy" octocanum drive train. This earned us the Engineering Excellence Award at the Chesapeake Regional.

-- Innovative use of a double rocker arm four bar linkage.

-- Lightweight and durable sheet metal frame cut on water jet and powder coated.

-- Full student designed and created CAD model.

A quick animation that points out a few of the features.

[Mr V]

2046 Galileo

In house

CNC milling

3D printed parts (though not as many as intially planned to to design changes)

Done by a student at his employer/our sponsor

Water jetted polycarbonate

CNC milling

CNC lathe

We also have a laser cutter but no robot parts were made with it this year though we did use it to make buttons.

I'll second the sentiment that you must check out 1899's laser cut plywood robot, it's a thing of beauty.

[Siri]

Current list, for reference:

Archimedes
20......manufacturing (waterjet, CNC & manual lathe, bridgeport, welding, broaching)
78......manufacturing (3D print, waterjet, CNC mill)
1902
2468....manufacturing (HDPE shooter) control (sound-responsive LEDs)
3310....manufacturing (CNC lathe, laser cut, CNC bender, CNC mill, TIG weld) and control (cRio-driven LEDs via Java, PIDs, limit switches & IR sensors)

Curie
359
1816....manufacturing (waterjet, 3D models with moving parts) and control (automated aiming)
2168

Galileo
222.....manufacturing (3D print)
125
842.....manufacturing (3D print, waterjet)
1086....manufacturing (octocanum, four bar, water jet & powder coat sheet metal)
2175....manufacturing (3D print, manual mill & lathe, laser cut, waterjet, CNC plasma cutter)

Newton
1640....manufacturing (polyurethane mold, laser cut, CNC & manual mill, manual lathe, MIG weld) and control (swerve code, prox sensors & limit switches, vision processing, driveable swerve display)
1741....control (shooter angle)
1899....manufacturing (plywood frame)

Not Attending
100?
696

Looks like I need to schedule myself more time off to look around!

[Vince]

Thanks for the great suggestions and summary.

We are also be looking for control/sensor applications, as well as detailed CAD work (as well as any simulation, say for climbing or shooting mechanisms), so more leads in those areas will help as well.

We appreciate everyone's assistance finding case study leads.

[Coach Norm]

Originally Posted by Siri

Current list, for reference:

Archimedes
20......manufacturing (waterjet, CNC & manual lathe, bridgeport, welding, broaching)
78......manufacturing (3D print, waterjet, CNC mill)
1902
2468....manufacturing (HDPE shooter) control (sound-responsive LEDs)
3310....manufacturing (CNC lathe, laser cut, CNC bender, CNC mill, TIG weld) and control (cRio-driven LEDs via Java, PIDs, limit switches & IR sensors)

Curie
359
1816....manufacturing (waterjet, 3D models with moving parts) and control (automated aiming)
2168

Galileo
222.....manufacturing (3D print)
125
842.....manufacturing (3D print, waterjet)
1086....manufacturing (octocanum, four bar, water jet & powder coat sheet metal)
2175....manufacturing (3D print, manual mill & lathe, laser cut, waterjet, CNC plasma cutter)

Newton
1640....manufacturing (polyurethane mold, laser cut, CNC & manual mill, manual lathe, MIG weld) and control (swerve code, prox sensors & limit switches, vision processing, driveable swerve display)
1741....control (shooter angle)
1899....manufacturing (plywood frame)

Not Attending
100?
696

Looks like I need to schedule myself more time off to look around!

For 2468, I would add the string Potentiometer. It is probably better than the other items you list for us although the LEDs are a favorite of the students. We use the POT to adjust the angle of shooter deck as well as PID control on the shooter wheel using an optical sensor.

[kenavt]

Originally Posted by Coach Norm

For 2468, I would add the string Potentiometer. It is probably better than the other items you list for us although the LEDs are a favorite of the students. We use the POT to adjust the angle of shooter deck as well as PID control on the shooter wheel using an optical sensor.

I think this is a simple and effective sensor for arm and elevator applications. I know that we and 1718 have installed string pots as well, and this is 2337's second year doing so.

As for other interesting software features prevalent in FRC, the rise of using the cRIO's FTP server to send autonomous scripts that are read by the robot to quickly tune autos and then switch between them is a useful feature.

Plus, I know teams that are also using configuration files of robot constants (such as PID constants) that allow quick constants changing and, thus, tuning. It trumps having to rebuild and redeploy code every time something needs to be changed. We are utilizing both of these this year - I'd love to talk about these, or the string pot, at Championship this week.

[sanddrag]

Team 696 did some mathematical modeling of frisbee flight using Matlab if you're looking for something of the sort.

[ticoloco12]

Team 207 prides itself on it's manufacturing. We're an official chapter of SME (society of manufacturing engineers) and thanks to that and some serious hard work, we've been doing some really cool stuff. Every part on the robot that's not from the KOP is either machined or 3D printed in house by the kids. design work is pretty insane too. These kids use Solidoworks to high-end industry levels. We were a part of the first book and would love to be a part of the next. There is a whole team component dealing with documentation of our design process as well so we have some great stuff for you to see!

Keep the Hawthorne High School of Manufacturing and Engineering in mind! We won't be at nationals this year, but we are easy to reach...

[Navid Shafa]

1983 will be bringing pamphlets and paperwork in collaboration with our Water-jet sponsor OMAX.

Please stop by and grab the paperwork.

Talk to myself, or preferably ask for Liam in our pit.