Who out there is planning on making major updates to their robot at their next Regional?
Our students have a major upgrade scheduled for the robot on Thursday before the real matches begin and I was wondering who else was planning on doing the same.
We always continually work on the robot throughout the regionals, and even on into the off-season. We’ve joked before that we always do well at off-season events so maybe we should think about only competing as an off-season team 
But this should be one of our b est bots out of the box so far, so I don’t think it will need too many major updates at all, just little tweaks here and there.
We were considering adding a magical backspin generator to our robot (surprisingly simple modification), but it will probably have to wait till LA (if we do it at all…). There are just too many other things to perfect at our first regional.
I think the students can pull the modification off and the robot has the potential to be the best one on the field. The students just started making a list of everything that could be made better and then made plans to do it. In one day I recieved over 50 e-mails from students and other mentors about robot improvements and if they could be done. Talk about 8-10 hours of brain storming in cyberspace, I was exhausted. No part of the robot will be spared from the upgrades and no one upgrade is technically difficullt it is just the vast combination that brought me to ask the question. We have 33 updates planned…
CORE has come through in the past and will do again! I just love to watch the students work on the robot.
Where is my coffee?
we will be making upgrades thursday for our first regional based upon what we saw from the first week videos lol
See you all in Week 4 and 5!
Keep in mind the 25 lb rule on spare parts that can be brought in. However you can take as much material as you want and construct there.
I haven’t really seen them enforce the 25lb rule, but then I’m not there on Thursday either. Have teams really been penalized for having more than 25lbs? It’s just replacement parts that have been fabricated and not raw material, right?
It’s not really a matter of them enforcing it, it’s a matter of GP. I have no idea if a team has ever been penalized, never had to deal with that because we always comply within the 25 lbs. You can bring as much raw material as you want and build or make your improvements at the regional but fabricated parts must be 25 lbs or less.
Our team has decided to convert our robot into a shooter that can fire all the way across the field while driving 40fps and easy handling. Oh, did you want realistic upgrades?
No, we do need to replace a belt and a few other things. We should be able to get it done just fine though. I’m not worried.
Joey
We are adding on a turret to shoot poof balls at green lights and another arm to place tubes on the hurdle…
You haven’t done that yet? 
We will be making modifications to the wrist mechanism so we will no longer get caught on the rack if we over-drive a hurdle.
We’ll also make a few other tweaks to enable us to de-rack the ball in hybrid mode.
Designing and building robot upgrades is one of the best aspects of the FRC experience. In the “real world”, the design is never complete until the prototype has been put through the paces and you transform it into its best and final configuration.
In our first two seasons, we had the good fortune of going to two competitions. Both seasons, our robot changed significantly from Thursday of the first one to Saturday of the second. This year we are only able to do a single regional, so we are doing whatever we can to cram two regionals worth of experience into one. Following the discussions on CD helps a lot. We took up Team 288 on their invitation to use their full-size practice field (Thanks again Robo-Dawgs!) and that gave our drive team a lot more experience than they got on our limited home field. I got to check out the action in St. Louis last Saturday and came back with a few ideas. Our team is taking a field trip to watch the Detroit Regional next week Saturday. We are watching a lot of webcasts. We already have a few good ideas, and should have them up and running by the time to we take the field at the WMR. Our autonomous/hybrid will be totally different than the “as shipped” plan. Our gripper “hands” will receive a “thumb” to improve the ball speed during hurdling. I’m sure we will come up with more by the time we are done.
I guess that’s an oxymoron. An FRC robot is never done!
we’ll never be letting a ball fall out of our grasp again, and removing the ball will be able to happen at any speed not just ramming speed.
Also some simple modifications to smooth out reorienting our swerve drive which will overall theoretically catapult us up there with simbotics and those crazy chickens.
Were swaping in some faster motors and geraboxes to make our roller claw go 4x faster 
Were also working on hybrid (encoders weren’t working in Portland).
Thanks for all your concerns and we will be well under the 25 lb rule and under the 10 hour rule as well. Last year being our rookie year we were hesitant to make more than simple modifications, but then we had some reliability issues last year as well. The team will touch every part of the robot to improve speed on all drives, handling, gripper function, hybrid mode, mast movement, safety features, controls and build robustness into little (and sometimes big) things that broke in St Louis.
I like the turret design. You could use it to shoot the track balls off the over pass in hybrid and at the end of the game! Humm, I am sure we would be over the weight limit adding something like that to ours!
I just needed to know if this was normal or are we taking on more that what other teams have taken on.
Second year concerns…
One more thing I need feedback on. Are drivers ever satisfied with the speed of the robot or do keep asking the teams for more speed?
Our first regional is Detroit, and we already know we’re going to make some pretty lengthy modifications. Our practice bot has shown us some issues that will have to be fixed before the game. It’s a challenge to watch that 10 hour window and make sure you’re legal with fabbing the parts. We’re bringing a lot of raw stock to the competition to fab on the spot exactly for that reason.
I am working on possibly being able to knock the ball off in hybrid, and there are proposed major changes to the arms.
I think we’re just gonna do some mods for hybrid and maybe ad a sensor so that we can stop the elevator just high enough to knock the trackball off but not enough to get snagged on the overpass but idk, I gotta talk to our robocoach and mentor to get clearance.
Also with the 25 pound rule, I’ve never seen it enforced and it’s funny because when I went to uncrate at the Champs my freshman year some team brought in an entire ball shooting mechanism with a conveyor belt, and it was definitely more than 25lbs. It’s more about GP than anything, and plus any pre-fabbed component over 25lbs should have been shipped with your bot, IMO