pic: Team 256 presents our offseason robot: Stockade

[KrazyCarl92]

Another thing to consider for the climber:

Unless you have really solid weight estimates everywhere in your CAD model, it's going to be difficult to know your COG. However, if you want the robot to lift level, you will need to know the forward/aft position of your COG. To achieve this, we left room for the hooks anywhere along the length of the robot within about a 1 foot span. To locate our COG we stood the robot up on its frame with a wheel on each side between the table and the frame and rolled it forward and back until the bot remained level without us supporting it. The location of the COG is directly above the line segment between the contact points of the 2 wheels on the robot frame. This allowed us to locate the hooks such that the robot would lift level.

It looks like you have some play with where you can mount the hooks, so perhaps this will help make your robot lift without much swing.

Originally Posted by KrazyCarl92

Another thing to consider for the climber:

Unless you have really solid weight estimates everywhere in your CAD model, it's going to be difficult to know your COG. However, if you want the robot to lift level, you will need to know the forward/aft position of your COG. To achieve this, we left room for the hooks anywhere along the length of the robot within about a 1 foot span. To locate our COG we stood the robot up on its frame with a wheel on each side between the table and the frame and rolled it forward and back until the bot remained level without us supporting it. The location of the COG is directly above the line segment between the contact points of the 2 wheels on the robot frame. This allowed us to locate the hooks such that the robot would lift level.

It looks like you have some play with where you can mount the hooks, so perhaps this will help make your robot lift without much swing.

Yeah, I designed it knowing I'd have to make the climber position adjustable, so I made sure we could change it easily with the multiple holes in the 1x1 it sits on.

[the.miler]

How's this project going? Some students on our team were looking at the bots going to Madtown and it reminded me of Stockade. Will we see this at Madtown?

My thoughts on the 10 pt. hanger: Having cylinders that pivoted (but defaulted to one location with bungee cord) worked out well for us at CalGames. That flexibility allowed us to roll up to the pyramid fast, see the hooks depress a couple of inches in contact with the bar, and know that our hook engagement is good and our robot is going to get off the ground. Don't have any good pictures accessible right now, but there are plenty of similar systems out there. Team 2590 churned out something nice: http://frc2590.org/team-info/robots/518-athena.html

A rigid system makes it so that if your robot pushes up really hard against the bar, and your robot falls back after that initial push an inch or so (could easily happen if your driver releases the throttle because he is, say, afraid of bending the climber cylinders), you could miss the hang if your hooks can't tolerate that misalignment. That being said, plenty of teams made it work with large hooks, better support (like 254's bearings) and/or just really drilling their drivers.

We just found making a flexible pivoting mount and putting in bungee cords to be the best solution for our team; whatever works better for you is best of course.

Originally Posted by the.miler

How's this project going? Some students on our team were looking at the bots going to Madtown and it reminded me of Stockade. Will we see this at Madtown?

My thoughts on the 10 pt. hanger: Having cylinders that pivoted (but defaulted to one location with bungee cord) worked out well for us at CalGames. That flexibility allowed us to roll up to the pyramid fast, see the hooks depress a couple of inches in contact with the bar, and know that our hook engagement is good and our robot is going to get off the ground. Don't have any good pictures accessible right now, but there are plenty of similar systems out there. Team 2590 churned out something nice: http://frc2590.org/team-info/robots/518-athena.html

A rigid system makes it so that if your robot pushes up really hard against the bar, and your robot falls back after that initial push an inch or so (could easily happen if your driver releases the throttle because he is, say, afraid of bending the climber cylinders), you could miss the hang if your hooks can't tolerate that misalignment. That being said, plenty of teams made it work with large hooks, better support (like 254's bearings) and/or just really drilling their drivers.

We just found making a flexible pivoting mount and putting in bungee cords to be the best solution for our team; whatever works better for you is best of course.

Thanks for the advice! Stockade is gonna be showcased at Madtown next week, and we're so psyched to show off our new machine. I'd post pictures but I've been asked by some super excited freshman to keep it a secret (the bot, while designed by me, was built entirely by underclassmen. I'm really proud of them). Can't wait to play with the Unidentified Funky Object in a week!

[DampRobot]

Any news on the 7 disc? Will you have it working by MTTD?

Originally Posted by DampRobot

Any news on the 7 disc? Will you have it working by MTTD?

Due to lack of adequate testing time, we will not bring our floor pickup to the event. Instead we'll be a pure cycler, our original plan.

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

Due to lack of adequate testing time, we will not bring our floor pickup to the event. Instead we'll be a pure cycler, our original plan.

Story of Powerhouse and Calgames for us.

Originally Posted by DampRobot

Story of Powerhouse and Calgames for us.

If we end up performing like y'all at CalGames I wouldn't mind a bit.