6423 Iron Patriots Build Thread | Open Alliance | 2022-2023

Hello and welcome to the 6423 Iron Patriots 2022-2023 build thread! We are honored to be a part of the #openalliance this season. Our team is in its 6th year of existence, being founded at Ward Melville High School in 2016. With around 40 students and more motivation than ever, we are ready for 2023 to be our breakout year! We intend to release weekly updates to both our Chief Delphi thread and YouTube channel, at https://youtube.com/@user-uf7sd3xq1g?feature=shares

Covid recovery: Our district (and team) was forced to shut down in 2020 due to Covid, striking a massive blow to our sponsorships and member count. As a result, this is the rookie year for the majority of our team. We’re trying our best to overcome this however, and we have high hopes for the season.

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Pre-kickoff update:

So I thought I would talk a bit about what we’ve been doing to prepare for kickoff as a team, especially during the last month. After becoming finalists (3rd robot on #3 seed alliance with 3171 and 5736) at the Half Hollow Hills invitational, we devoted the majority of our meetings to preparing our team for kickoff.

Build team:
Our build team has met every Tuesday, from 2-3pm right after school. We spent several meetings giving presentations and teaching about how FRC works, especially for our new members. The NASA Robotics Alliance Project Design Guide, by team 118, has been an extremely useful resource for explaining the different types of mechanisms FRC bots tend to use. We also spent a few meetings in our machine shop, where we taught new members how to use lathes and milling machines.

Programming team:
Programming team has been preparing for the season by reviewing code from previous years, teaching new members how to program autonomous mode hands on, and setting up and working with new limelight camera vision system.

CAD team:
To my knowledge, this is the first year that we are implementing a dedicated CAD team (or attempting full robot CAD at all :skull:). That being said, our dedicated CAD & design team has been very active since December. We’ve participated in two CADathons: F4 and the 2485 hosted CADathon. Both went well and gave us much needed design experience. We plan on releasing public CAD updates throughout the season.

Kickoff:
As per team tradition, we’re holding a kickoff party on Saturday in our main tech lab, where we watch the reveal video and then brainstorm as a team. At our last team meeting before kickoff, we held a mock kickoff using the 2011 game to help prepare new members to know what to expect. We’re all super excited to get the season underway, and we wish all teams the best of luck! #watergame

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Happy 3rd day of the build season!
CAD team meeting:
Our CAD team yesterday was extremely productive, meeting for several hours to brainstorm the game strategy and mechanisms for this year. Though the CAD team is very new to us, we have been able to coordinate and utilize every individual’s unique past experience to come up with designs. We’ve decided the best approach for the intake mechanism for this year, and the build team will start building a practice scoring grid to get started!

Good luck to all the teams out there! :sunglasses: :muscle:

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The first week of build season has passed, and already it’s already gone past our (or at least my) expectations.

Programming Team:

Our programming team has been experimenting with our first ever limelight and camera system. Despite some initial technical issues due to the addition of a new camera affecting the networking and wiring needed, we have worked together to push on. As such, we have been able to begin using the limelight to follow targets, specifically AprilTags, and hope to begin creating some more complex maneuvers.

Additionally, we’ve started the programming for swerve drive and hope to begin simulating our code while waiting for a finished drive base. Swerve drive in general is a big challenge for us, as our this is our team’s first year with swerve, but we are determined to master it.

Beyond that, our final major aim is to begin creating the code for the other subsystems now that we have a better idea of how our robot will function specifically.

Best of luck to all teams!

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Week 1 Update:
The entire team has been busy meeting every week day and Saturday to

Build Team
Build team has been busy prototyping to test out different mechanisms, preparing to create our first swerve drive base and the practice field, and disassembling old robots for materials. Also, build team has worked with electrical to design the electronics and stay organized.

CAD Team
Our CAD team has been hard at work brainstorming different mechanisms and game strategy. We are approaching a finalized design of our robot, for both manipulator and extension mechanisms.

Programming Team
As previously said, programming has been focused on learning to use our first vision system, and setting up the controls for swerve drive this year, and learning how to use simulations while waiting for subsystems to be built.

Apologies for the late update! We are excited to see what else this season will bring.

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Excited to see what you have to show off this evening at The Open Alliance Show! Looking forward to competing at FIRST Long Island Regional #1 with you all again.

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Awesome job on the OA show !!
So cool to see a Long Island team represented!!!

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Swerve Update!

Swerve drive is completely new to our team- we have not used it in past, mostly using WCD. As @pensilcandy mentioned, programming has gotten a head start setting up the controls and simulating the code. This will allow for more time to fine-tune our swerve drive when we do build it.

We have recently ordered the swerve modules. However, our school has to approve the vendor. Because of this process, it has been taking quite a while to receive the modules, but when it arrives, we will start to assemble immediately.

Arm Mechanism

Our CAD team has been phenomenal in prototyping efficient, but simple arm mechanisms to give us that full scoring range in matches. Currently, we are deciding between a linear bar mechanism that would extend completely using cables, or a classic arm on a lever.

Game Piece Manipulator

All of our build/ CAD team members have been vigilant about following the Ri3D videos, and have been prototyping examples posted by much more experienced teams. We are looking to build a claw that would exert enough pressure on cones to pick them up, but also align them upright due to gravity. This would eliminate having another mechanism to upright the cones, simplifying the process. The claw would also be able to compress the cube pieces enough to grab them firmly. We are deciding between a mechanism in which only one side of the claw would move in, using pneumatics, or having both compressors move into the piece with two individual pistons.

Open Alliance interview: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1710605146

https://youtu.be/U7A8w2REVJ8 6423 Iron Patriots looks to kick off their Charged Up 2023 season strong as they demonstrate their intake prototype and dive into their CAD with a swerve drive base and multi-stage elevator on The Open Alliance show

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Week 4 Update:

Been way too long since we’ve done a proper update, but through the past weeks we’ve been working hard

Build Team
Build team has made a nearly complete design for our claw mechanism. Some minor tweaks may come as we change the material used for certain parts, but our testing has shown good results so far.

Additionally, construction has begun for the arm and drive bases. We hope to use swerve this year, but late gear shipments may stop us from using swerve. As such, two drive bases are being built. One uses swerve, with 3-d printed gears holding place until the proper gears arrive. We hope to begin testing on it late this week. The second drive base is a tank drive, a design that we know we can use and is acting as a back up if swerve falls through. The arm has been made so it can be switched to and from each drive base depending on what the final choice is.

CAD Team
We now have a fully CADed robot! Minor design changes still may come, but we have locked in on the major aspects of our robot’s design. We have decided on using a arm on a level and a gravity-aligning claw.

Programming Team
This is gonna be a doozy.

Programming has three major projects - an automatic balance command, trajectory and path planning, and preparing code for this year’s robot. We have made a command on our robot from last year to automatically balance the robot on the charge station, and it works extremely well considering the lack of precise tuning. We plan on making a more precise and efficient version for this year’s robot.

Path planning has also gone well. We have been able to make paths for our robot to follow in autonomous on our past robot, as practice for path planning on swerve. We’ve already been able to make routines more complex than possible last season.

Additionally, we’ve been making the code for swerve so we can hit the ground running when it is assembled. Just today we implemented code that should allow path planning. Basic code for the claw, which we have been able to test with success, and the arm and wrist mechanism has also been written. We hope to test this code as soon as possible.

That is all we have for now. We cannot wait for competition day to come and see all other designs! Best of luck to all teams.

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https://youtu.be/2AXSOvVOtT0 6423 Iron Patriots checks in to show off their new claw with passive wrist, demo their pathplanner progress and discuss the challenges waiting for parts for their swerve drive and their backup plan

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Our team was present at the annual Long Island Maker Faire at Port Jeff! It was really fun : ) Thank you to all the teams that brought the field setup and game pieces!


Now, time for the offseason… :sunglasses:

Just wanted to share some cool pics from our media shoot today!


Hi, I’m the new media captain for this team!
I wanted to share our robot recap that we’ve been working on for the past couple days and I hope you’ll give it a look :slight_smile:
It premieres at 11:30 PM EST!

link for the video:
https://youtu.be/OQxAqNFRF6w

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