Disclaimer: While I work for Stratasys, I am posting here as a member of the FIRST Robotics Competition community, not as a representative of Stratasys. The words in this post are my own and were optimized by ChatGPT 3.5.
The 3D printed field has been designed to be more accessible to teams for the 2024 season (and hopefully beyond). The field has been engineered with a self-supporting design, eliminating the need for external support structures. The foundational components for constructing a half field can be efficiently 3D printed in approximately two hours, utilizing a Bambu Lab P1S printer and PLA material.
The field is now 1:40 in size, making it more portable and easier to plan strategies compared to last year. Plus, we added a scaled kitbot to hopefully help teams out even more.
For FIRST Choice, Stratasys has donated 2000 sets of vectored intake wheels. This part is a new design that has been optimized for printing on Stratasys Selective Absorption Fusion (SAF) technology out of PA12 (Nylon 12) material. The advantage of printing with SAF technology is that you can print 4000 vectored intake wheels in less than 8 days on a single machine out of real engineering-grade material. Printing 4000 vectored intake wheels on any other Stratasys technology quickly becomes time and cost prohibitive.
Important notes regarding the intake wheels:
- These wheels have undergone lab testing, not competition testing. Prior to using them in a competition robot, conduct thorough testing to ensure their suitability.
- Additional wheels can be acquired through Stratasys Direct Manufacturing or another service bureau. Dye options include black, purple, green, or blue. Economies of scale apply, reducing the price to approximately $5 per wheel for larger quantities (30+).
- DIY dyeing is an option, especially effective with dark colors (see: RIT Dye).
- MJF (by HP) and STEP (by Evolve Additive) technology may be successful for printing these wheels as well. The design has not been tested with either of these processes.
- SAF is a powder-based process, the wheels may feel a bit “gritty”, this is normal. These wheels will fail (due to thermal process differences) if attempting to print in Nylon 11 on a SAF system.
3D Printed Field CAD & Instructions
Feel free to post any questions you have here, and I will do my best to answer.