Robot Metamorphosis

[Musician]

this year, we changed our robot around so much and so often (last minute and at the regionals) that after each change in was like a new robot. (there will be and article on this at our website sometime)

I was just wondering what kind of last minute metamorphosis other robots have went through?

EDIT: oh yeah, while talking about fixing robots, our team has been sponsored by Igus for the past 3 years and i've never heard of one of their bearings breaking. this year we broke 3. 2 within like an hour and a half of each other. have you guys broke any?

[ForgottenSalad]

We ended up never mounting our shooter, adding a hopper, adding a door, removing the hopper, and adding netting... So quite a bit.

[Alex Golec]

Well, our drive has been in multiple stages, each one slightly different than the rest.

We originally planned for a 6WD robot in which the middle wheels could pivot up in order to create a 4WD setup in order to hold our ground while shooting, and also to create a "nook" in the center so we could go up the ramp with ease. Lo and behold, the entire contraption weighed 10lbs for the frame pieces and motors, and that happened to put us 5 lbs overweight.

To follow up to that system, we made a simple 6WD, with the center wheels lowered to allow turning, but what resulted was a teeter-totter effect when we tried to shoot, which was hilarious to watch when our shots hit above and below the goal.

That is how the robot shipped.

During our first fix-it window, our main engineer, Art worked on developing a castor-drop system similar to the one we used on our 2003 champion robot.

To make a long story short, what ended up happening was that the center wheels were removed altogether, the castors were added up front, powered by pneumatics, so then we installed an entire pneumatic system in whatever space was availible on the robot.

I once asked Jim Zondag from FRC 33 Killer Bees: "Are you guys done with your robot?"
He replied with, "This robot won't be done for a long time, because we keep on fixing it"

I think that making continuous improvements is one of the best parts of FIRST, just because there's always room for a little change.

_Alex

[Nuttyman54]

well, we orignally had a shooter...which we still do, just different. It was supposed to be single axis, dual 6" skyway wheels. It is now a powered roller. More specifically, it's the roughtop belting wrapped and strapped (yes it's held on by string) around a plastic CIM motor coupler from yesteryear. it works well for getting low goals anywhere from mid-field right up to the corner ramps. The drivetrain stayed the same, and thankfully we didn't have to remove the pneumatics!

[RoboMadi]

well nothing much really this year, but last year we had to add a whole new arm right before the competition(i mean Thursday).
This year we had some regular trouble with our hopper, but we were able to fix it at our first regional.

[IraJason]

During build, we had put together 3 completely different chassis designs in 24 hours before we settled on one. Probably saved us a lot later on in terms of weight.

[YonZ]

drivetrain count=6

Hartford:
1. brecoflex treads
<snap!>...
2. brecoflex tread MATERIAL wrapped around tread pulleys, 2wd (didnt have enough materials for 4)
3. wheels swapped for 2wd, diff material on pulleys

NYC:
4. 2 Omniwheels and material 2 pulley wheels, 4wd
5. 6wd with small IFI wheel in center
-(4. reinstated)
6 (potentially tomorrow). Omniwheels break, we might continue driving with the broken ones as they wont cause too much of a problem, else we'll be swapping those for skyway wheels


What haven't we tried? pneumatic wheels...thats about it...

[DarMagi]

We actually took a week to design what everyone wanted on Autodesk, then we built that, of course with some tweaking, such as a ball pusher that was scrapped and a dumper/hopper that was way too long. Other then that, I definately recommend putting a design in autodesk before you start building, it helps to pick out design flaws. Of course, you can have some people still building an actual chasis while this is going on.

[Musician]

we used autodesk, but we didn't have time to test the robot and see what went wrong (we had some very unexpected difficulties in machining some of our parts). so we got to test it at regionals (the smile is sarcastic)

[Nuttyman54]

I would like to nominate 1281 for their AWSOMELY EFFECTIVE modification. See the picture