Welcome to the Steel Talons 2025 Build Blog!
This is our first year doing a build blog so it will probably be updated weekly or biweekly. This year we will be competing at the FiT San Antonio and FiT Space City event. We hope to continue our 2 year streak of reaching Worlds and build a highly competitive robot.
The current goals list for the robot is:
- Deep Cage
- All Levels Coral
- Score into net without needing processor
- 100% Coral Placement Accuracy
Due to facility constraints we were unable to start prototyping until Monday, and over the past couple of days we have been working on out intake subsystems, specifically a coral ground intake.
Coral Ground Intake Testing:
8 Likes
1/8/25 Build Blog
Hey y’all!
Today we ended up refining our prototype for the Over-The-Bumper intake and decided that due to use needing a bottom roller, we would use a slapdown as opposed to 4 bar. Here’s some footage of the testing:
Coral Re-orienter
We also started working on a way to straighten out the coral to feed into the end effector. We found that it would be easier to do this rather than make a wrist to reorient the coral on the end effector.
Feel free to ask any questions!
3 Likes
1/9/25-1/10/25
Hey y’all just another update on our bot!
Intake/Reorienter
We’ve hit a giant roadblock in trying to both get the coral from the floor and straighten it into our end effector. The main problem that we are facing is that with the above design the game piece is too fast when it enters so it doesn’t straighten out but when we slow down the intake rollers the CORAL can’t make it over the bumpers. The initial concept for the reorienter/straightener was to use either passive Lexan in the shape of a funnel or two powered wheels similar to 254’s 2022 robot intake (shown below).
Climb
So far we have made good progress with climb. The plan is to use two claws to grip onto the deep cage and then pivot the frame up similar to 148’s 2010 robot:
Future Plans
We have a 9 hour long build session tomorrow so hopefully we can figure something out tomorrow. The only thing left to iron out is the ground intake, so we should still be on track to have a completely CADded out design by Thursday.
6 Likes
1/11/25-11/13/25 Update
End Effector
After much deliberation we decided that instead of trying to make a separate coral floor intake we would do something like RoboChargers in 2023 with an arm on a wrist:
We tested out the coral part of the intake and it proved to have some pretty good results
Floor Intake Test:
Coral Station Test:
Were expecting to finish CAD by Wednesday this week, so expect a model soon!
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