Welcome to Team 1787’s 2025 Open Alliance build thread!
Team 1787 The Flying Circuits is excited to be taking part in the Open Alliance again this season! We are a team based out of Orange High School in Pepper Pike, OH.
Important Links:
GitHub Repository
OnShape
Instagram
YouTube
Our goal for this thread is to have weekly (or more) updates about what’s going on with our team this build season!
We are currently registered for the Finger Lakes Regional in Rochester, New York (Week 3), and the Buckeye Regional in Cleveland, Ohio (Week 6).
If anybody has questions for us, feel free to ask!
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January 4 - Kickoff
Kickoff was super fun earlier today! It was again hosted at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio, with many other teams in attendance.
When we got back to our shop, we went through the rule manual and started brainstorming and sharing different ideas. We have not yet determined what game elements we will focus on, but I have added below some ideas we have discussed potentially trying.
Deep Cage Climber
This idea would have the robot push the cage up slowly against its bumper to then catch it inside the robot to allow for easily positioning the cage inside the frame perimeter of the robot to climb.
Elevator and End Effector
This concept is an elevator with 2 independent end effectors that can extend and retract to grip both the coral and the algae. Once the game piece is secured, the end effector would rotate to place the coral onto the reef branches. On the other side of the elevator would be a flywheel mechanism to launch algae into the net.
Coral Shooting Low Robot
We also thought it could be interesting to try having a super low robot that shoots coral from the floor onto the different branch heights.
On Monday we will be working on more brainstorming and starting work on some prototypes for ideas.
January 6
Today we continued to brainstorm and started to get a clearer picture of what our different options to choose to work on will be.
A student laser cut the algae inflation jig today, so now our algae is the right size.
So far most groups are coming up with ideas that would use an elevator or pink arm to score the coral and algae, as well as some people looking into shooting the coral from a lower level onto the branches.
We went over various ideas students had today, including different prototypes to pick up coral from the ground, two of the Onshape documents for those are here, and here.
Pink Arm Climber Idea
This climber idea relies on us using a pink arm to score game elements. It would be a sliding clamp mechanism that can move up and down on the outer tube of the arm with a clamping mechanism on it and would raise as the robot approaches the cage. Once clamped on, the mechanism would move down towards the pivot, essentially moving the robot upwards, and then the rest would pivot to ensure the entire robot stays off the ground.
We plan to decide what game elements we want to focus on during the meeting tomorrow, and we will be fabricating and assembling prototypes.
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January 7
Today we started working on fabricating our first prototypes and continued to brainstorm. After taking a vote at the beginning of our meeting, our top priorities at this point are to be able to score the coral, remove the algae from the reef, and do the deep climb.
Coral End Effector/Intake Prototype
A group of students laser cut and assembled a prototype for a mechanism that would go on the end of an arm. The mechanism would intake the coral and use 2 axles with mecanum wheels to move the coral forward or backward to be placed on the branches. The orange wheel held on top would be a passive wheel to help hold the coral in place.
A video of testing it can be found here.
The Onshape document can be found here.
Coral Launcher
Another group worked on a design to test launching the coral from the ground using 4 flywheels.
The Onshape document can be found here.
Tomorrow we expect to be creating more prototypes as ideas should be starting to take a more complete shape.
Tormach Training
Today a small group of students started the process of learning how to create the toolpaths for every type of operation we do on our Tormach and will be creating toolpaths for a part and then cutting it out later this week.
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Good luck this year! We will for sure miss your team at GPR but will be rooting you on!
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