FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)

FIRST General Forum
#21

I’ll buy at least one!

But it really should include team 1899. Using laser cutter, common “door skin” plywood, a bit of epoxy and some brilliant CAD, they have created the lightest, stiffest, cheapest robot frame at worlds.

Okay… technically I haven’t seen *all *the robot chassis going to worlds, let alone conducted stress tests and detailed financial analysis of them, but I’m more than confident that they deserve to be “in the book”.

And, for the record… this isn’t one of those million dollar lasers that cuts steel… this is a relatively affordable wood/plastic type of machine. I encourage you to try standing on one of their backup chassis!

Jason

#22

#23

222 would be happy to have you come visit our pit in Galileo!

Since I am a sponsor and mentor of 222 I will be in attendance at the championship.

We have a wide assortment of 3D printed parts on our robot this year. Everything from sprocket spacers to frisbee launching device to bearing blocks.

Here is our original frisbee launching device in the lower area of the picture. At the end of the build process we figured that it was critical to redesign the “pushing” device to allow for frisbee stacking. We were quickly able to 3D print a new design that was shorter and also wedge shaped so that the forward motion pushed the frisbee forward into the launching tire. The backward motion is where the wedge shape came into play by allowing the wedge to push the stack of frisbees up and over the pusher device to fire the rest of the frisbee stack.
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc1/428086_10151408054692340_801574046_n.jpg

If you do happen to be interested in speaking to me and I’m not in the pits when you stop by just ask for a team member to text/call me so we can find each other.

#24

The students of FRC2168 would be happy to discuss our robots design and our manufacturing style with you. We’ll be on Curie this year (the team’s first year ever making it to Championships).

Here’s a picture of the rev 2 robot this year. The team completed a complete redesign of our superstructure between regionals.

No matter what I will likely do the same thing I did last year and post up the design break down of both machines I mentored this year.

Thank you again for getting these books up and going again. They are an awesome resource for the community.

#25

Vince,

We have a nice control system to control the angle of our shooter. It is very precise. It won a control award at Boilermaker. Stop by FRC 1741 in Newton.

I am looking forward to meeting you.

-Hugh Meyer

#26

We use the DI/O ports of the sidecar, one each for red, green, and blue, and a custom circuit for the LEDs.

#27

125 is interested. We are very proud of our design, and our pit crew would be happy to explain the systems and how we designed and manufactured them. Please come find us on Galileo.

#28

I’m excited to see the positive responses about the next book, and I look forward to meeting you all at the Championship. Keep those posts coming!

#29

You’re more then welcome to stop by 1902’s pit and talk with some of our students. We’ll be in Archimedes (just look for the pig face beacon on the wall).

Our ‘Users Manual’ is here](http://www.explodingbacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/OwnersManualRev3-1.pdf) if you want to get an overview of our design and build process.

Thanks for doing another edition, I look forward to reading it.

#30

Hi Vince and Stephanie! Great news that a new book is in the works! If you have time, please feel free to stop by Team 78’s pit. We will be in Archimedes. There are several robot parts that were 3-D printed and some parts that were cut out with a waterjet/CNC mill. The kids would love to show our hard work! See you in St. Louis.

#31

Vince/Stephanie – what balance of price point and quantity of information are you guys aiming for? Also, will there be a software-specific section, or will it be limited to strictly mechanical items?

We don’t have anything special w.r.t. hardware – but we’re doing some pretty cool things with software. We will be at Champs (Newton) if you’d like to see.

#32

100% in for buying a book.

You should have a pre-order signup at champs - as a minimum get people to sign up on a list but better yet get a square and collect pre-orders! I for one will put my $ where my :smiley: is!

Best of luck.

#33

Feel free to stop by our pit. We can gladly answer your questions, and would love to be in this book.

#34

The previous two books are inspiring… beautifully photographed, written, and made. They were very helpful to me when I first started FRC to understand the capabilities and level of sophistication of the robots/teams. We constantly turn to them for ideas.

We would love for you to stop by our pit in Archimedes. Here are a few stats on our 2013 robot/process.

  • Resurrected an old CNC lathe and Bridgeport mill in the offseason: 44 unique (214 in total) student made parts in a mentor’s garage.

  • Laser cut and CNC bent sponsor made parts: 78 unique parts (512 in total)

  • CNC milled sponsor made shooter/flywheels (4 parts)

  • TIG welded chassis with large climb V groove down the center

  • Addressable LED lights driven from the cRIO using Java SPI

  • PID control using encoders, potentiometers, and gyro for shooter RPM, distance, turning, shooter angle, and blocker height.

  • Limit switches and IR sensors for game piece counting

  • 100% CAD modeled

#35

No specific quantity of information yet. Right now we are looking for some insight on which teams we should visit while at the Championship. We don’t need a complete write-up, just some highlights. As we proceed with our plans, more information will become available on submitting material for review.

The specific sections of the book haven’t been defined yet. We will let everyone know as we work out more of the details. Any innovative use of software is definitely worth mentioning. We are still in the planning phase, and any novel uses of manufacturing techniquest could help to shape the chapters in the book.

#36

Here is the response from my programming mentor Joe H:

The implementation in San Antonio (Alamo) was using the cRIO’s FPGA and RT processor to implement the Bling.

The FPGA was responsible for reading back buffers of timed audio data
using DMA from the analog input channel that had a microphone
connected.

The RT processor then performed DSP on the audio to identify the power of the Bass portion of the signal (128 Hz - 32 Hz). It also used some sinusoids to slowly sweep between target colors.

Once the color was chosen for that time, the FPGA was told to change
the 3 (red, green, and blue) DIO PWM signals that were driving the 3
channels of the LED panels. The FPGA continues to generate this duty
cycle until the next color is chosen by RT.

The digital outputs have FET buffers on them to allow the PWM signal
to control the relatively high current LEDs.

Hope this helps,
-Joe

#37

FIRST Team 1086: Blue Cheese would love to show you what our students have designed and built this year. You can find us in the Galileo Division.

A quick list of features:

– Light weight “Legendairy” octocanum drive train. This earned us the Engineering Excellence Award at the Chesapeake Regional.

– Innovative use of a double rocker arm four bar linkage.

– Lightweight and durable sheet metal frame cut on water jet and powder coated.

– Full student designed and created CAD model.

A quick animation that points out a few of the features.

#38

2046 Galileo

In house

CNC milling

3D printed parts (though not as many as intially planned to to design changes)

Done by a student at his employer/our sponsor

Water jetted polycarbonate

CNC milling

CNC lathe

We also have a laser cutter but no robot parts were made with it this year though we did use it to make buttons.

I’ll second the sentiment that you must check out 1899’s laser cut plywood robot, it’s a thing of beauty.

#39

Current list, for reference:


Archimedes
20......manufacturing (waterjet, CNC & manual lathe, bridgeport, welding, broaching)
78......manufacturing (3D print, waterjet, CNC mill)
1902
2468....manufacturing (HDPE shooter) control (sound-responsive LEDs)
3310....manufacturing (CNC lathe, laser cut, CNC bender, CNC mill, TIG weld) and control (cRio-driven LEDs via Java, PIDs, limit switches & IR sensors)

Curie
359
1816....manufacturing (waterjet, 3D models with moving parts) and control (automated aiming)
2168

Galileo
222.....manufacturing (3D print)
125
842.....manufacturing (3D print, waterjet)
1086....manufacturing (octocanum, four bar, water jet & powder coat sheet metal)
2175....manufacturing (3D print, manual mill & lathe, laser cut, waterjet, CNC plasma cutter)

Newton
1640....manufacturing (polyurethane mold, laser cut, CNC & manual mill, manual lathe, MIG weld) and control (swerve code, prox sensors & limit switches, vision processing, driveable swerve display)
1741....control (shooter angle)
1899....manufacturing (plywood frame)

Not Attending
100?
696

Looks like I need to schedule myself more time off to look around! :wink:

#40

Thanks for the great suggestions and summary.

We are also be looking for control/sensor applications, as well as detailed CAD work (as well as any simulation, say for climbing or shooting mechanisms), so more leads in those areas will help as well.

We appreciate everyone’s assistance finding case study leads.