pic: 1902 Rookie Robot and Teaser

[Dan Richardson]

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[LightWaves1636]

dude I so love the video

[JamesBrown]

Looks good, that will be a solid 1 point bot and will be able to feed other bots. Congratulations on an awesome robot for your rookie year. My advise now would be to get alot of driving practice in and see if you can find a local mini competition this week.

[Rick TYler]

Looking good. Some advice from a sophomore -- think about what happens to your big roller when another 130-pound bot hits that at a 45 degree angle at a combined closing speed of 10 or 20 feet per second. I would seriously consider some sort of crash bar in front of it. Of course, you probably already plan one and I'm just wasting your time, but it was the first thing I thought when I saw your pic. Good luck!

[Dan Richardson]

Thanks for the advice rick, we are considering it because that could be a problem. When playing defense we will be using the front side and avoiding frontal impacts. But it is 4" schedule 40 and we've hit it pretty hard, team 1083 used a similar design in 2004 and it never broke facing similar impacts.

we are still trying to figure out the best method for putting a guard over it, we are worried that if you put something directly across and it were to bend due to impact and flex into the roller. It may cause the roller to catch and motors to stall. We are definitely working on it. If you have any ideas to help us out let us know.

[Greg Perkins]

Originally Posted by Stud Man Dan

Thanks for the advice rick, we are considering it because that could be a problem. When playing defense we will be using the front side and avoiding frontal impacts. But it is 4" schedule 40 and we've hit it pretty hard, team 1083 used a similar design in 2004 and it never broke facing similar impacts.

we are still trying to figure out the best method for putting a guard over it, we are worried that if you put something directly across and it were to bend due to impact and flex into the roller. It may cause the roller to catch and motors to stall. We are definitely working on it. If you have any ideas to help us out let us know.

Dan,
if your not out of envelope yet, just take a peice of angle stock, and bolt it to the front spanning between the peices of square stock. that should give your rollers enough protection, just a suggestion.

[Dan Richardson]

We were leaning towards something like this but the problem is there is no way to mount the angle without it interfering with the roller, we'll probably use angle just have to notch it where the roller goes.

[Rick TYler]

There are some nice, stout pieces in the KOP that might fit across there just fine.

As for guard deformation into the roller, it's like the steel-toed boots argument. Some people say that they don't like the idea of a steel toe being crushed onto their foot when something heavy lands on it. I say, imagine what your foot would look like without the steel toe. A protection bar may not absorb all the impact, but it's likely that it would leave your roller in better shape than a hit that wasn't protected at all.

[Dan Richardson]

I guess that would all depend if the roller would break on impact or not, if the metal were to deform and jam into the roller, the roller would not be able to spin even tho it would break, it would not be able to function during that match. This is what I meant.

I should really do some testing on the pvc, I'm very curious to how it would respond to impacts. And I've really wanted an excuse to buy a big hammer :-)

[phrontist]

This is my favorite robot of all I've seen posted to CD so far. Way to go the high road, student built and designed!

Hope I get to see it in person.

Oh, and DJ Kool is one of the finer one hit wonders this country has produced

[Eric Scheuing]

Great job for a rookie team. Heck, great job in general.

Just like I thought, it is a garage.

[Dan Richardson]

Heh thanks for the compliments and yes dj kool is pretty amasing, even if that is the most overplayed cheerleading song of all time heh.

[Kirk]

Awesome robot guys. The only thing I would suggest is maybe see if you can speed up the intake roller. It looked like you guys were pushing balls rather from sucking them up. With 2 fisher price motors powering it you will still have plenty of power.

Good luck
Kirk

[bbehnke]

that looks prey nice. but one thing. that looks realy heavy we just weighted our robot today and it was like 10 lbs. over adn we dont have a clue of where it came from and the base of you robot looks realy heavy. i was just wonder ing if u guys have a weight issue yet

[Dan Richardson]

Actually as far as weight we are having the opposite problem, we were aiming to have a shooter and an elevator. When we had to scrap the 2 programs we ended up way underweight. The robot you see there weighs like 100 lbs, we are trying to devise ways to add weight creatively.

As far as the intake roller, the video may be deseptive but it does suck the balls in due to compression, instead of using raw speed we compress the ball on the intake forcing the ball to find its lowest energy state. Speeding it up would help some on pushing the balls out, but as is we are able to unload 10 balls on the ramp in just under 2 seconds. It would allow for us to push the balls faster and roll them at a distance but where is now seems to be working, we'll deffinately however have to keep this in mind while testing this week.