Last Thursday while doing a demo at our school we became bored with just picking up tetras and placing them on our one goal, so we tried out picking up other objects that we had handy.
As it turns out our large bulky tetra manipulator is the perfect size for picking up trash cans by their handle and moving them about.
From this we continued onto chairs, along with coming up with challenges, like balancing a chair on top the trashcan we set on a table, then proceeding to place a tetra on top the chair. Next we actually picked up our center goal and placed it on a table, then proceeded to place two tetras on top the goal, which is the highest we had ever tried stacking.
Needless to say we all had fun and the demo was a great success at giving the community a glimpse into both FIRST Robotics and FLL.
whats the big white thing in the back? a home made piston? cool robot.how high could ya stack on the center?
I wonder how many custodians wish they had something like that! 
At least the garbage can appears empty otherwise the way you’re picking it up you’d have trash all over your robot. :eek:
yeah I think you may be right. Looks like the Piston was used a stabilizer for the arm. Cool Design. I also like your wheel set up/selection, haven’t seen many with that combination.
And the Trash Can Feature, oh man that should be a 10 point bonus per full load of trash.
I think there is a large spring inside the white pvc tube.
Sanddrag’s got it right - the PVC tube is simply covering up our 50 lb spring, to keep it from pinching wires and fingers as the arm moved.
The spring was added at our second regional to reduce the amount of air needed to lift the arm, making it possible to cut the working pressure on the main cylinder down to 45 psi instead of 60.
As for how high we could stack, we still aren’t entirely sure. The highest we ever stacked in competition I believe was either 4 or 5 tetras on the center goal. Last Thursday we were able to stack 2 on top the center goal while it was sitting on a lunchroom table, which is approximately 2.5’ off the ground. We only have 4 tetras total, so we haven’t been able to test our maximum on our own.
YEAH!!
Stack those trashcans.
… 2006 FIRST game:
Trash’em
You are allowed to use as many human players as you may please. Trash the human players and take the trash can to the goal zone in the field. You only have 5 Trash cans to work with.
that wase sweet i wish i wase ther … that wase an introsting idea to put the spring in ther i would have never thought of that
