We Are Back!
Welcome back to Team 587 and our second year in Open Alliance. We are a team located in Hillsborough, North Carolina with students from all four years of high school.
Going into 2025 Reefscape our main goal with OA is to post more often than last year. Once the season starts we will update major events as well as add links to code and CAD. We are super excited to get this season started.
Teams in towns named Hillsborough (spelled the correct way) are the best! Good luck!
With Kickoff Weekend coming to a close we finished up our initial brainstorming ideas.
We met in our build space before moving up to the library in the school to watch the reveal. After reading the general game rules we split into small groups for the first look into strategy and design. Each group read the manual more in depth and created a basic design on KrayonCAD.
A few of the designs are below:
This design focuses only on algae with a large shooter and a turret. It would also have arms that would reach out to intake and possibly remove the algae from the reef. It also has hooks in order to climb on the shallow cage.
This design is a coral only robot that uses both an arm and an elevator. It can climb on the shallow cage using hooks on the elevator and scores coral with a claw on a wrist.
This design would be able to score both algae and coral. It uses a hopper to intake coral and pass off to a claw. It uses a slap down design to pick up algae temporarily and score in the processor. It can’t climb but would have space to possibly add a climber.
After each group had some time to brainstorm we came together and shared ideas, giving feedback to each group.
After a night of more brainstorming and time to better read the manual we came in on Sunday and made a priority list as a team. Our goal with this is to understand the direction we want to go as a team. We used a want, need, and explore system to determine the most important things to design.
So far, we decided that we want to prioritize scoring coral as it offers a higher chance at points. Also, being able to score on all 4 levels is a must.
For acquiring the coral an idea we had was a hopper system that would automatically orient the coral for us to pick up and score.
We also decided that in order to get the coopertition bonus we would need a way to score algae in the processor. Although we don’t need to directly score the algae in the net, being able to fully pick up the algae and carry it with us is better than trying to herd it around the field.
We made a proof of concept in order to pick up the algae and one thing we noticed was how easy it would be for the algae to pass fully through the intake mechanism.
We’ll continue to iterate on these designs and keep this updated as much as possible.
Our week one was unfortunately cut short due to weather conditions (½ of snow in NC is grounds for school closures) and we aren’t able to access our build space until Monday.
With that being said, this week did have a lot of prototyping and testing of old designs and the creation of new ones.
Towards the end of the week we went over each design and created a pros and cons list and voiced concerns or praises about each idea. Although we haven’t yet decided fully on which specific designs to use, this should help us gauge which ideas are best for our goals.
For starters we continued on our original hopper idea for coral collection and made a sturdier prototype to test it. The first design had a flat area on the bottom where the coral would funnel to in order to be picked up and scored.
We found that this design allowed for the coral to get stuck easily unless it bounced perfectly through. We ended up making a second design without a flat bottom area with two powered wheels that better align the coral.
This ended up working a lot better and we tested from different angles, heights, and distances from the HP station.
We have multiple groups working on algae intakes. Group 1 started testing an idea for slap down intake that would only hold part of the algae and score it in the processor.
We tested multiple center distances and wheel placements and found we could get around 5-6” of compression on the algae before it refused to cooperate. However, the more compression we put on the algae, the less control we had on it and multiple times it went straight through the prototype instead of just holding on to the side.
Group 2 went for a combined coral and algae scoring mechanism. Similar to many 2023 designs it can pick up and score both game pieces by expanding or closing a claw.
In our initial kickoff priority list, we had agreed that coral would be the most efficient scoring method, so we have multiple different designs, each with a different method of acquisition.
Design 1 aims to grab the coral by pinching the wall of the PVC. The result is that it only holds onto a small area of the coral.
Since the plates were small enough we ended up 3d printing the plates for this just for ease. The small form factor is the biggest pro of this design.
Design 2 is pretty straightforward and resembles a much more standard intake. 2 rollers hold the coral in place from the outside.
We actually don’t have this intake fully put together (blame the snow) as we didn’t have time before we left for the weekend. It was originally supposed to be made on Wednesday, but after cutting the plates we realized we didn’t have the correct sized belts. We ended up having to edit the design slightly on Thursday and cut them then, but got about halfway done with putting it together.
Design 3 is not a scoring mechanism but an alternative intake to the hopper. It’s primarily a ground intake that would center the coral as it entered the robot for us to pick up and score.
*We also have Design 4 which is the algae/coral mixed design, but that’s all above.
CNC!!!
We finally got our ShopBot working and cut the first plates of 2025 on it this week. Over the offseason we got a 24” x 18” ShopBot CNC Router and rearranged part of our build space to make room for it. Previously to cut out plates, belly pans, and field elements we had one of our sponsors cut it out, but now most of the smaller elements will be made in house making accurate prototyping much faster. Bigger things such as the main parts of the field will still need to be made outside the build space.
Field Elements are also in progress currently. The Coral station is finished and one section of the Reef is in progress. One of our mentors/sponsors is currently cutting the rest of the parts for the field this weekend. We should have most of our half field built by the end of next weekend.
