The Hunchback of Noteredame
We’ve been lackin’ on posts, so here’s a massive one. This post details the design process of our alpha-bot, our next post will be detailing the specifics of the constructed robot.
Bicep
Our Bicep arm draws heavily from 2910 and 1678’s 2023 robots. Our visit to champs allowed us to learn a lot last year, one of our learnings (which we have been broaching for a while now) is that Hex Shaft will hold you back if you let it.
As such we are using 40mm Round tube for our bicep shaft. This is live on alpha, connected to a 200:1 gearbox with a built in tensioning for the chain, powered by a NEO.
Forearm
With a lack of Notes and time, we skipped prototyping for the most part in favour of watching other OA teams. We still have some plans in mind to test on Alpha, but its not something we have found necessary with this simple of a game and so much data out there already.
Prototyping Favorites:
- Spectrum’s Build Blog, Especially their gallery
- 4481’s Build Blog, Especially their data analysis
- Unqualified Quokkas, Especially our 3 mentors that participated on Unqualified Quokkas
Our current design runs our wrist actuation from the base to the 40mm tube, to the wrist through 25 Chain. This is to keep CG as low as possible and keep the end effector light.
We also run our shooter up, but with 9mm HTD belts instead. Both of these runs are not in the CAD.
Drivebase
We are using SDS Mk4i L2 modules, we used the Mk4s last year and loved them, however over the offseason we identified how game changing having a low CG robot is (Especially with our new rather wild driver).
Our size is 650x600mm
Next Steps
We are working on having our robot mechanically finished ASAP, as I post this we are assembling with the parts we’ve manufactured throughout the week. The hope is to provide programming with as much time as possible, especially with the unforeseen issues we’ve had with migrating from last years’ libraries. Robot should be mechanically finished Sunday, as we have a 2 day break now.
We’re hoping this can streamline our competitive bot, while providing our drivers with important practice.