FRC 9047 TechMaker Robotics | 2024 Build Thread | Open Alliance

[BolivarFernandes]

Welcome to the 9047 TechMaker Robotics build thread for the 2024 edition of the Open Alliance! This is our first year participating in the Open Alliance and the second season in FIRST. We want to share our construction process to inspire other teams with our ideas, and also learn new concepts through interaction in the build thread.

FRC 9047 is a school team based in Blumenau, Santa Catarina, Brazil, and managed by a Maker Education Space at SESI Education Institution. Our current roster includes 14 students from different schools in our city. We have 3 main mentors and 3 alumni.

We will be participating in the Brazil Regional event in week 1, focusing on building a reliable and relatively simple robot, leveraging our strengths in mechanics and software.

We are planning to meet for 30 hours per week in January, and with classes starting in February, we will try to maintain this frequency. We will make posts when we have enough material for a post.

If you have any feedback or questions about anything, please reach out to us here on Chief or through our social media channels, either via private messages or in the thread.

Team Links:

2024 OnShape CAD

2024 Robot Github

2024 Photos and Videos

Youtube

Instagram

[BolivarFernandes]

Hello CD,

The first two weeks have been quite intense for us. We tried to gather as much learning as possible from the robots in 3 days and set up our testing field.

This year our regional will be in week 1, which is a huge challenge for us. Thinking about it, we’ve outlined some golden rules gleaned from various posts of more experienced teams.

→ Keep it simple
Let’s aim for a robot with a simple mechanism and as few degrees of freedom as possible.

→ Steal from the best, invent the rest
I believe everyone on the CD understands this GR.

→ Make the driver’s job as easy as possible
We want a dynamic robot during the game and will always opt for Touch it, own it mechanisms that make the driver’s job as easy as possible.

→ Fail faster
Our prototyping process is very consistent, and we’ve learned to use the available tools. Thus, the key to our success lies in being able to test all interactions of the mechanisms.

We have developed a general robot archetype philosophy for this build season.

• Be ready to play with a lot of drive practice
• Be robust and never break
• Have a well-trained team that understands the game, strategy, and robot functions
• Execute tasks effectively and consistently
• Accumulate bonus ranking points consistently through your performance
• Have well-defined strategies that reflect your robot’s capabilities

[BolivarFernandes]

Helo CD,
In the second week, we thought a lot about the archetype of our robot and the interactions we want to have on the field.

This led us to the following list:

Must Have

1 - Move quickly with MK4i L3 and weight below 40 kg.

2 - Capture Notes from the floor

3 - Touch-it-own-it wide ground intake of notes

4 - Score in the Speaker with Shooter from the Stage

5 - Score in the Amp

6 - Hang on the Chain even with a partner.

With this in mind and some mechanisms tested, we started building our robot in CAD. Our team is quite new, and we don’t master all the mechanisms commonly found in FRC, so our options are heavily based on our team’s capabilities. At this point, the golden rules are crucial to avoiding potential pitfalls.

2024 OnShape CAD

Highlighted items so far:

• Initial height 26’’
• DriveTrain 28’’
• Fixed intake shooter inspired by RI3D Quokkas
• Intake below the bumper
• Climbing elevator for stability.
• Climbing height 34.6’’
• Everybot118 claw to pick up from the Source and deliver to the AMP.

Our archetype so far is to have a low robot to move freely around the entire arena with a very low CoG for stability. The DriveTrain has been built and is undergoing stress testing, and the programming team is testing autonomous routes. We achieved consistent shooting at the Speaker with the prototype and plan to integrate it into the DriveTrain this week.

Points of concern that we would like to discuss:

We don’t recall seeing an elevator with the crossbar high in this way. We are concerned about the stability of the second stage, although the height of the 2nd stage is not that great.

We hadn’t seen an intake below the bumper before. When the first teams did this type of interaction, we found it incredible and used this idea to our advantage. However, we are concerned about the effective capture of the note.

[johnnydreher]

Hello CD
I’m also a coach from 9047 Techmaker Robotics.

Our initial code is here at github.com
We have used YAGSL to drive our swerve modules.
We trying to made routes to make at least 3 notes on autonomous, but if it is possible, made 4.

Beside this, we will use apriltags to navigate thru points of field, especially source, because this is in a long range to view.

We are at our second year of FRC and very proud for our team. Our programming team is all rookies, and they are doing a very good job yet

[johnnydreher]

Today, At programming team we stopped the tests with our drivetrain. The mechanical team are using this to assembly our Intake/Shooter

Because of this we are trying to implement Vision with a raspberry to increase our automation at Teleop. Our robot has devices at 3 sides, because this we need a little more help to drive team be efectivelly

[luis.igi]

Dae pessoal, o conceito de vocês está bem legal e parece que vai ser bastante competitivo pra nossa regional week 1, boa sorte e até a competição (falei em português mesmo)

Hey guys, your concept is really cool and it looks like it’s going to be quite competitive for our regional week 1, good luck and see you in the competition

[johnnydreher]

Hello

This last weeks at electrical and programming side we got so many tasks done.

First, our programming team starts the development of subsystems. This means a lot to them. This guys are rookies and this is first contact with hard coding to them, so we are proud because they are doing this by themselves.

Our mechanical team finished the drivetrain and intake/shooter structure, so electrical team came to do the job.

This will be finished soon, but work´s! LOL

Then, all sparkmax’s be updated, all CAN devices have been addressed, and it is moving.

Now, we are finishing some of tests. The shooter is showing some weakness, and we are made it strong.

Yesterday we receive from one of our sponsor, Stemos, some devices to increase our automation. This means a lot, because some of this things in Brazil are really hard to buy and usually the price is bigger then other countries.

Hope you enjoy CD. Next weeks we will have more videos and photos

[johnnydreher]

Hello CD, yesterday we finish our work week with some great advances.

For the First time we will have a co-processor on our robot, só we install a Net hub to allow ALL devices on Net. We are increasing our automations trying to detect elements like notes or other robots to avoid accidents on autonomous. We will try tô made a 4 notes, and we are testing one to catch at least 2 notes from center field.

Our mechanical team finish The instalation of our intake/shooter and this is working well. Some adjust here and there. We decide to install a sensor or switch to detect when notes are inside

Here some tests

[johnnydreher]

Today we Begin to assembly the last parte of robot, The elevator. This will have a claw like everybot to catch and point at AMP, but our robot still low enough to pass below chain. This elevator will be our climber too

The only problem we get is we will need tô chance our electrical board. Not a too hard job, but still a problem

[CarvalhoJeo]

I would love to see what you guys are using to secure the Sparks for the mk4i!

Also, how are you guys planning to power the cancoders?

[johnnydreher]

Hello CarvalhoJoe. We are fixing our sparks at robot chassis, soon I’ll post photos to you.

Our Cancoder we are cabling with pingeon2 and powering directely to PDH with a 10A resetable fuse

[johnnydreher]

Here some photos.
At back, we fix this in a support 3 D printei.

At front, because our shooter, we can fix The two sparks, só we fix one of then, and the other we will fix at robot chassis

[johnnydreher]

Today we finish to assembly our elevator and remake our electrical panel

We add a end of course switch

[BolivarFernandes]

Hello CD. I hope everyone is doing well.
In week 5, our efforts turned to our Climber elevator.
This is the first time we’ve assembled an elevator for the FRC and used the Compact Elevator Bearing Kit for basic assembly, but we developed all the rest of the mechanism custom.
We used HTD 5m belts for transmission and pulleys printed in ABS.
We have a long-standing love affair with pulleys and belts and use them whenever possible.
We are concerned because an elevator requires more force than speed, but the system performed well.

We observed other teams using a hook for the climber with a notch for a chain link. A very elegant design to prevent the robot from slipping off the chain.
We developed some prototypes that are undergoing testing.

At the end of Saturday, the robot attempted to climb a few times, but the belt shifted within the clip.
We will install a 5M HTD Clamping Plate printed on Monday. We believe that since the system doesn’t require as much speed, it will work.

Next steps: Utilize the correct gear ratio in the MAXPlanetary System to achieve the necessary force for climbing while also ensuring speed for quick execution.

[BolivarFernandes]

Hi @CarvalhoJeo
We used the mounting plate provided by team 4272 for easy assembly of an MK4i with Neos. TKs 4272

[johnnydreher]

Hello to all CD

As I said in other posts, our programming team are rookies, even for First and programming, so they are learning to use GIT, and beacause that they made a big mistake with our banches and commits.
So, here are our code. Thanks to YAGSL guys, now we are using WPILIB 2024 and our swerve is working well
Robot2024

And here are some tests with our robot all assembled
Scoring at AMP

Climbing

Some Driving Tests

[ghesla]

Really nice to see a Brazilian team with an Open building process. Thanks for that Techmaker!

[johnnydreher]

In the last days we are training our drive team crew and we are implementing some automations at programming side.

Our team is not so big, we have 13 students and 3 mentors, so our mechanical team are helping marketing and presentation team to assembly things for our PIT and Impact awards.

Unfortunately one of our students, who was our potentially driver got sick. Our regional is in 12 days, and we’re rooting for him to be okay. So, we are dedicanting this post to him, Get well soon Felipe!!! Fica bem logo Felipe!!!

[johnnydreher]

Hello all CD
Last week we have some great things happening here
First of all, Felipe, who was sick, became well and will drive our robot at Brazil Regional next week.

Last friday we have a tradicional event, we came a stay all night long working and cheering. Some of our students sleep at our facility. This made a strong bond between all team and help us to advance on robot.

This is Wilson, our robot, receiving their LED. This will not only made it beatiful, but will help drivers.

Our programming team is working with our cams. The robot is targeting Speakers and notes automatically
Targeting

As said, our crew enjoy some time together.

And we can help our FTC team to made their robot too. Some of our best Alumni came as mentors to help

But, of couse, this can be very exhausting

But some troubles can happen. We had luck this was not with robot
Climbing