Hello everyone! We hope your build season is going well. Yesterday was largely dedicated to prototyping, and we’re certainly moving towards a final design direction. The biggest development from yesterday were the prototypes that our design team introduced to the whole team near the end of the meeting yesterday.
The first design strictly relies on a conveyor belt. Essentially, it would make use of an under-the-bumper intake to feed game pieces into a variable speed shooter to score in both locations. We decided not flesh it out because we can tell how it will work based on the CAD.
The 2nd design that includes both an elevator and a shooter. The over-the-bumper intake is capable of feeding both the shooter and the elevator to ensure optimal scoring potential and versatility.
This third design is the epitome of one of the golden rules of FRC design: “steal from the best, invent the rest”, and is codenamed “The Secret Sauce”; it takes heavy inspiration from Team 254’s 2018 robot. It is equipped with both an elevator mechanism with a wristed intake for the amp and a wheeled shooter for the speaker. Additionally, it comes in at under 2 feet tall in starting configuration and will be capable of using the elevator to climb. It’s incredibly compact, and will make great use of the speed provided by our swerve drive.
We also presented two designs we discussed previously to the team.