2017 LigerBots 3D Printed Parts Contest Winners

FIRST General Forum
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For those unaware, the LigerBots ran a 3D Printed Parts Contest for FIRST teams to show off innovative ways they used 3D Printing on their robot. We had seven judges who judged each part we received based off creatively, and the problem faced. For more details on the contest, please go here.

Now, before I announce the winners, we had a lot of great entries and as such, it was hard to narrow it down to three choices. I hope all teams who entered keep on 3D Printing and push more teams to use 3D Printing on their robot in the upcoming season.

In 1st place is FRC Team 2702 - the Rebels for 3D printing nearly all the parts on their robot. This included the mechanism to manipulate whiffle balls and the climber. Using 3D printing enabled them to stress test their parts on a test robot.

http://i.imgur.com/SlTg8HJ.png

In 2nd place is FRC Team 2079 - 4H ALARM Robotics who created a low-cost and light weight ramp that allowed them to funnel balls into their shooter. They created the part in a way that allowed them to add specific additional extensions to increase the length of the ramp.

http://i.imgur.com/ycYcX8U.png

In 3rd place is FRC Team 207 - METALCRAFTERS for the team’s 3D printed climber. Using 3D printing enabled them to continually redesign and re-scale the piece as part of the design and build process.

http://i.imgur.com/KqyBRjP.jpg

Hereis the Newton Stem article about our contest.

I’ve also attached the 3D Printed Press Release that goes into more detail about these mechanisms. Hope you all enjoyed this contest, and sorry for this late press release! If you didn’t know about this contest this year and would like to be reminded about it next year, please send me a direct message and I’ll remind you when we run this contest again. :slight_smile:

20173DPrintedCompetitionPressRelease.pdf (342 KB)


20173DPrintedCompetitionPressRelease.pdf (342 KB)

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I’d like to thank the Ligerbots for running this contest, and MailmanDelivers for delivering. Our team is planning on releasing an edited version our submission as a whitepaper in the weeks coming, along with some higher-res renders of our assemblies (my new laptop with a d-gpu is being shipped as we speak). If you have any questions, I (and other Rebels) will be more than happy to help.

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Are those track spikes on the 3rd one?

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Looks like! I wonder how they did the threads, whether tapped into the plastic or if they used thread inserts.

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I’m honored that my team was selected for second place.

You can’t see it in the image, but the whole thing is actually 5 pieces (2 of the red, 3 of the gray). The design included grooves that, with generous filing and epoxying, fit into one another.

It’s also amusing to me that each winner has the digits 2,0, and 7 in it.

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Yes they are track cleats, they worked fairly well, they held the full load of the robot. We tapped directly into the plastic, we had some failures. Mostly due to thinking they were metric threads, so they were incorrectly tapped. Once we got the right tap and grew the holes to the right size worked as well as metal. Lot less work!

We have been printing end use parts that hold fair amounts of load since 2011. So printing is always found on our robots.

Very cool contest! Thanks for the PR