FRC9443 Aluminum Panthers | 2025 Open Alliance Build Thread

[karomata]

We’re ecstatic to be back with our 2025 Open Alliance Build Thread. Last season you followed our rookie story as we started from basic beginnings into a competitive team that’s making a splash in New England! We’re excited to be competing in the 2025 FIRST Dive Season and look forward to another exciting season.

Links
Instagram | Facebook | The Blue Alliance | GitHub | YouTube | Website

Who are we?
We are a second year FRC team from Pentucket Regional High School in West Newbury, Massachusetts. We are composed of students in grades 9-12 from West Newbury, Groveland, and Merrimac.

Last season we had a great rookie season, competing in playoffs at both of our district competitions and the New England District Championship, and receiving the Ganson Division Rookie Inspiration Award! We’ve met weekly since last season through the summer and fall to learn new skills and make an impact in our community.

Why did we join the Open Alliance?
Last year we joined the Open Alliance as rookies with the goal of capturing what a rookie experience looks like in the modern era of FRC, with swerve module kits, kitbots, and more resources than ever before in FRC history. Our blog focused specifically on our struggles and overcoming obstacles, poking fun at our silly mistakes and celebrating the problems we solved.

We’ve return to the Open Alliance in 2025 with the goal of expanding on this message. It’s our goal that this blog will contain relatable stories of problem solving and applying concepts into mechanisms, as well as the sharing of interesting ideas we have along the way. We still have a long road ahead of us on the journey to becoming a highly capable and competitive team like many of the other Open Alliance teams, but we’re here to share the path we travel along the way.

We’re excited to share our story with you all again this year, we hope you enjoy reading!

[karomata]

Written by Outreach Coordinator Will and Team Captain Izzy

We’ve been up to some exciting stuff here at Pentucket since 2024 District Champs and we’d love to share it with all of you!

Introducing FIRST Robotics @ Pentucket (FR@P)

We’ve started our new team organization FR@P, FIRST Robotics @ Pentucket. It is a pipeline that seeks to engage elementary and middle school students in robotics, via our newly founded FTC and FLL teams, FLL64989 and FTC25728, and guide them to our FRC team. Our FTC and FLL teams are now up and running. We generated interest for these teams in the Elementary and Middle school students by hosting summer camps to introduce them to FIRST, and let’s just say it was a hit! Although multiple of our team members worked back to back hours for the summer camps, it was well worth it to help engage younger students and introduce them to FIRST.

Recruitment

We’ve picked up many new students this year and attended many offseason competitions to engage them in the FIRST experience and teambuilding. When at offseasons, our more seasoned students and mentors have helped newer students navigate a FIRST competition setting. Although we didn’t win any of our competitions, it was an awesome and enriching experience for both new and returning team members.

A full list of our offseason events can be found below:
Battle Cry 24

Summer Heat

Mayhem in Merrimack

N.E.R.D.

Offseason & Preseason Projects

Our practice swerve drive base that we built last year, named Helium, was dismantled to implement MK4s with Krakens which was a brand new motor and swerve module to us. Helium used the REV MAX Swerve system to drive, and that same system was applied to Neon, our 2024 competition robot. The familiarity we had with using MAX Swerve made for easy repairs and an overall effective robot, although we had many instances where our swerve lost multiple pushing matches. Which led us to want to apply MK4s to match the power of other robots. Helium has been dismantled and we have finished on our new slightly smaller Kraken drive train, Helion. [Helion is a light isotope of Helium, signifying that Helion is a modified version of Helium]. After a whole season on Max Swerve, we decided to change things up and try something a little more powerful. After Helion’s completion, during its first test drive, it started to flip and wheelie. We have begun working on a roll cage, to make sure it doesn’t break while we drive it.

Outreach

Throughout the off season and preseason we have completed 61 outreach events such as demos and community service. Some of our favorites include volunteering at Common Ground Cafe in Haverhill by packing food for the less fortunate and a trash clean up at Ferry Park in West Newbury. We have also shown Neon to the community by bringing it at the Groveland Day Fair, and playing catch with the notes and anyone who stopped by. Additionally we demonstrated Neon to industry professionals at Chesterton in Groveland. We have much more in store for the future and plan to keep the progress going!

[karomata]

Written by Outreach Coordinator Will and Team Captain Izzy

We are super excited for REEFSCAPE this year! We have identified all our needs, wants, and bells and whistles for this year’s robot.

Kickoff Details

Our second kickoff event was just as exciting as our first! Our new members were excited to experience their first ever Kickoff after having spent Preseason with us working on last season’s robot and designing a new practice robot. (Helion) which allowed us to try new ideas on a smaller bot. Once the game for this year was announced everyone was very involved in learning the game, understanding the rules, and creating ideas for the new robot.

Game Analysis

Our procedure to analyze the game at build season starts by looking at the field as a whole group to create a shared understanding of the layout. Important details such as where the drivers are relative to the scoring elements and protected zones are important to understand before diving into the rules. One topic of extensive discussion during this segment was about which processor your alliance scored in, as it took us a while to rationalize the idea of feeding algae to the opposing human player.

Once we feel we understand the layout of the field, we break down the rules and work in groups to collect information on ways to score, ways to incur penalties, and other important rules to note.

From a group cost-benefit analysis, we determined these were our scoring priorities. We evaluated complexity, points earned, and scoring capacity when putting this together.

Climber Prototyping

For this year’s game we have decided to tackle the challenge of climbing on the deep cage. Our central design involves starting by pushing the bot into the cage to slightly lift it up. From there we have a system that would involve some corkscrew or rack and pinion system to lift the bot up off the ground. The design for gripping the cage has not yet been figured out but we have a doorknob grip idea that would slide into the rungs of the cage

Algae and Coral Intake Prototyping

Our team has designed a possible prototype for the pickup of algae. It works by pinching the ball using the sushi rollers, causing the ball to be pulled up into the intake. We found that the ball constantly tries to slide back out of the prototype which means that we would have to constantly keep the mechanism running so we don’t lose the ball. We were able to use the same mechanism for coral pickup, but it doesn’t require constant motion since the coral stays in place.

Another coral intake design was one that went through the whole length of the coral with a suspension stopper at the end to hold it in place. The other side would be attached to a motor that would let the coral slide off. The weight of the coral would push on the suspended end that held it in, and after sliding onto L2 or L3 the suspension would pull it back in place.

[karomata]

WEEK 2 UPDATE

We’ve been busy prototyping, designing in CAD, and crafting our award submissions!

Brainstorming Robot Designs
Based off our design priorities, we came up with a few different approaches.

A common point of discussion early on was whether or not to have a handoff built into our coral mechanisms. The challenge is that we need multiple degrees of freedom to be able to grab a horizontal coral from the floor, lift it and turn it 90 degrees, then lift it up and score it at various angles.

Focusing on simplicity, we identified a way to score coral on all 4 levels, obtain from the station, and manipulate algae on the floor, all with only 2 degrees of freedom. This design uses a 3 stage elevator with a 24 inch pivoting arm that has fixed rollers. This design alone can achieve everything we hope to achieve with coral and algae with the exception of coral ground pickup. For now, we have chosen to forego coral ground pickup for the sake of creating a minimum viable robot for competition - a high functioning limited capability robot is better than a low functioning high capability robot.

Our climber continued to evolve, with further iterations into how it functions. We had a REV linear actuator on hand, and we used it to prototype a full scale climber.

The linear actuator is a shift in application from our initial lead screw with linkage concept, however achieved the same end. We’ve continued to evolve this design after learning from Rusthounds Ri3D, and are currently looking at actuating this mechanism with a winch.

Building the Manipulator
When approaching the construction of the manipulator, we used multiple stages of prototype to nail down the arm length and needed heights on the elevator. We began by constructing a basic frame that allowed us to simulate elevator heights, arm lengths, and arm angles.

The rollers were prototyped in an earlier stage where we verified their efficacy.

Everything we learned through these tests informed our measurements and design moving into the CAD stage. We found that a 24" arm could do a lot to simplify our elevator needs, and that we could counterbalance the arm by placing the motors on the back end and using our new belt skills to run the rollers and arm pivot from behind the elevator.

All together, this is the design we generated in CAD:

We spent Monday cutting out the pieces and assembling the mechanism, and it’s as cool as it looks.

[kr1699]

Your manipulator looks clean! Excited to see how this bot turns out.

You said you were looking into manipulating algae on the ground; is this mechanism intended to do that, or do you plan to just remove it from the reef and plow it?

[karomata]

Our prototyping evidenced to us that we would be able to remove the algae from the reef but would not be able to possess from the reef. On the ground, we would be able to suck algae in over the bumper, maintain a solid grip, and then wheel it into the processor from it’s possessed state.

Thanks for the question!

[kr1699]

Awesome solution! Excited to see how it plays out.