Since our season is now in a state where we don’t know if we can schedule more meetings, when or if Greater Pittsburgh Regional will happen, we would like to share our finished projects.
STRONGHOLD ROBOT
Over the course of preseason and the end of Build season we decided to rebuild our stronghold robot, which originally had a simple am14U3 drivetrain, 6 hi grip wheels and most of the robot made out of the KoP. Fortunately, FRC technology has evolved since then but we still made it inexpensive.
Now that we have rebuilt it 4 years later, we decided to make some upgrades to improve the works of the robot, we placed a metal sheet inside for the boulder to hit, use stronger materials for our frame and installed a VexPro Versaplanetary motor to our arm mechanism alongside changing the am14U3 chassis from 6 wheel drive offset to 4 wheel drive flat with omniwheels on the back, this was a major change considering the 6 inch wheel in the middle was replaced with a 4 inch wheel in order to convert to 4 wheel drive, benefits of the 4 inch wheel, if the robot gets stuck on top of a ledge the 4 inch wheel can still touch whatever is stuck under the robot. Sure there could have been easier options but we chose to use what we had in used parts, the only thing unused in the robot was really the electrical system (Other than Talons) and bumpers. The reason we didn’t follow the rules for our rear bumper only covering the back end was because the robot will only serve for display and demonstration purposes so we are worried about potential damage but unless we are going to compete with other stronghold robots a simple one piece rear bumper on the back will do the job and this is the only set it will be given without iron-on vinyl.
POWER UP ROBOT
After working on the previous robot, programmers had some code to try out on the Power Up robot but unfortunately for them they had to get a new RoboRio (old one was corrupted) which was ordered in preseason, once the build season was over we decided to slap a new RoboRio on, change up some code and get it running again, wasn’t much of a project, made some small repairs but that was all we needed to do
OPERATION CART RENOVATION
As you have probably seen at Miami Valley Regionals and Greater Pittsburgh Regionals or even Detroit World Championships, we had a very simple cart, a square frame, sign on the front and a plywood top that was painted black, last year one of our parents donated a very nice sign, so this year we decided to upgrade the cart a bit, or at least I was just allowed to play with it finally. So before preseason even started, I ripped the top off of the cart only leaving the sign on the front so that I could make a new top to the cart, during this process I decided to put some LEDs on there so that we could put our retired batteries to use during the season since they were all well beyond being able to be used for the competition. During the electrical work and some trial and error, the team knew there was going to be a new cart top but no clue what I was about to give them, then came the day the cart was all put together and a short run to home depot was made after the reveal so the top could be bolted down. During this time period some team members and a mentor also worked on building a brand new workbench/battery cart for the competition which worked exceedingly well!
INFINITE RECHARGE
The moment you all have probably waited for, or at least wanted more details rather than small leaks here or there. I present to you, the Lemon Juicer, In the beginning of the season we determined we would come between being support robot and top tier robot, which worked out great at our Week One event (Miami Valley Regional), sure we made a small change since then to how our climber works but we now have a robot that can do a 2 Power Cell pickup, hold 5 Power Cells, dump into the lower port quickly, rotate and perform position control at the control panel and ultimately climb all with fast and efficient programming/mechanical functions. However a new drive train upgrade we have added this year is the NEO brushless motor on our KoP am14U4 drivetrain.
