How many are going to add a scaling mechanism after week 1??

[Sperkowsky]

As soon as the season ended we finished up our scaling mechanism. Installing it will be the first thing we do on Friday.

[hrench]

We have the mechanism completely built and ready to go on. Looks like it will work. It's actually been mounted on the robot before bagged.

But will we add it? It's really mixed.

I expect the mechanism to require testing and fiddling to get right. It wasn't 'designed-in" from the start, so we had to fit it in available space.

The number of hours the robot is out of the bag will seem too small and we have drivers that need practice on 'real' field elements.

Also all day Thursday, my team's build mentors and pit crew will focus on helping teams that need don't have inspection stickers yet.

I'd really love to have a scaling robot for this weekend, but we'll play again at the end of March. By then we'll have a practice 'bot to test it on.

So how many of you are looking at this this same way...?

[catacon]

Originally Posted by hrench

We have the mechanism completely built and ready to go on. Looks like it will work. It's actually been mounted on the robot before bagged.

But will we add it? It's really mixed.

I expect the mechanism to require testing and fiddling to get right. It wasn't 'designed-in" from the start, so we had to fit it in available space.

The number of hours the robot is out of the bag will seem too small and we have drivers that need practice on 'real' field elements.

So how many of you are looking at this this same way...?

This is EXACTLY our situation.

[Chris is me]

Understand that after-ship scaling mechanisms are unusually difficult to build as you are building a mechanism that supports the entire weight of your robot and is relatively difficult to align / use. Be sure you put lots of thought into how things on your robot are mounted.

That said, it's certainly doable and I would expect any team serious about iteration to be looking into it. 118's solution is novel yet difficult to implement. Tape measure solutions are also harder than they look.

[IronicDeadBird]

I want to add shtuff to the robot but the space constraints have been killing me.

Is it just me or is the low bar an effective cheesecake killer?

[orangemoore]

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

I want to add shtuff to the robot but the space constraints have been killing me.

Is it just me or is the low bar an effective cheesecake killer?

I think you have that backwards cheesecake is a low bar killer. If the team giving the cheese cake can do low bar there is almost no point* in having another one


*this does vary on strategy however to do low bar you only need 1

[hardcopi]

We will probably add it before our 2nd event. Our practice bot showed us that our carbon fiber arm wasn't strong enough to last through this game. Just going over obstacles cracked the arm from bouncing around. So this was spent designing something different. Love the solution we came up with for the CDF and Portcullis. Hope they work as well on real field elements.

[Bob Steele]

I do believe that cheesecaking a hanger will be difficult unless a robot is stripped down. Even then it will be very difficult. I am sure someone will do it at Champs but it will be nothing like adding can grabbers.

I agree that that most low robots will have a difficult time adding one and still go under the bar.

We had to make the choice so our entire central structure is devoted to the climber.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Understand that after-ship scaling mechanisms are unusually difficult to build as you are building a mechanism that supports the entire weight of your robot and is relatively difficult to align / use. Be sure you put lots of thought into how things on your robot are mounted.

That said, it's certainly doable and I would expect any team serious about iteration to be looking into it. 118's solution is novel yet difficult to implement. Tape measure solutions are also harder than they look.

We think we've found a novel solution to extending the tape measure, which seems to be the most finicky part of a tape measure lift. You can't just reverse the spool the tape is wound on because it unspools itself instead of extending. We were resigned to a second motor driving a rubber wheel to pull the tape off the spool. To simplify things, we used a banebots green wheel and pressed it against our main spool with enough compression to ensure it could pull the tape all the way to the bottom. Running things without the extra motor just to test them, we discovered we didn't even need it. The compression from the BB wheel makes the layers of tape stick to each other all the way down to the bottom, so now torque from the spool transfers up the stack to push the top layer out without any unspooling. Our system now consists of a the main spool driven by 2 CIMs through a gearbox, the undriven green BB "tensioner", and a servo to tilt the tape up and down to set the hook.

[Hitchhiker 42]

We're planning on doing a climber. We're probably going with a tape measure climber, which we have 5 weeks to build until week 6. Let's hope it works!

We're doing this because at Waterbury so few robots (only 2064 as far I saw) scaled, and it made them top choices for alliances. Also the extra 10 points over challenging is often enough to tip the balance from one alliance to another. Many games were within a 5 point range.

[Boltman]

One of the teams who had a scaling mechanism option never used it (could not do it in practice) in San Diego last week and still won.

Scaling "on the field of play' is much harder than it looks. Our first sub component ever built was our scissor.... every week of build we worked on it and our winch... it took pre-week practice to test it and fail. Finally in San Diego on the practice field success!.... Then in qualifications 4 complete fails 2 hook ran out of time 1 scale but too early by 2 seconds (very last qual) and 2 other scales in eliminations that were a success and the other one negated (drop down before the 5 seconds were up).... its hard even with it being the very first component designed....almost gave up on it. Almost cancelled our CV trip over it..because of level of competition up there...and expense of another regional.

I am happy as can be it now seems to work on the playing field as a low bot..took a long time to get there. But its ultra cool looking when it works. Crowd pleaser and worth 2 HG. If multiple bots do it wow (4 or 6 HG). Only better single action plays are multiple boulder autos (6 HG+ damage ). Check it out this week CV. Its pretty. I think it will make a difference all regional long...many games are decided by 10 points or less.

What I like about our scaler...its lightweight the scissor is just to hook our winch (from behind the bar we use castle wall sometimes ) and ultra secure during tele-op then the entire top of the scissor pops off as we winch up...takes about 8 seconds if we hit the hook on bar the first time. We bolstered the center of gravity point where the strap comes from so it scales level.