pic: 3D Printed Parts Contest



3D Printed Design Contest

Application:
Title: FRC#XXXX - Submission of Part X
Attach a .stp, .prt or a picture/render of the part you created for any FRC game.
Have a brief description of the object.

Important Information:
Deadline: April 21st. — EXTENDED TO APRIL 30th ------
Send your application to: [email protected]
You can also post your submission in this thread to share with the FIRST Community, but make sure to send it to us.
This contest is to allow teams to show off innovative ways they dealt with problems that occurred or achieved goals the team had.
The part will be judged based off three criteria: Creativity to solve a problem, elegance of the solution, and complexity.

(For complexity I mean the complexity of the task and/or the amount of different ways it can be used. The part could be able to complete multiple tasks - i.e, two birds with one stone.)

Prizes:
1st: A Ligerbots T-Shirt, and a $25 Gift Card to Dunkin’ Donuts.
2nd: A Ligerbots T-Shirt, and a $10 Gift Card to Whole Foods.
3rd: A Ligerbots T-Shirt

Add pictures/comments or questions below!

Unsure why this uploaded sideways. If you click it the picture is oriented correctly.

It probably has to do something with this: http://rotatemailer.com/sideways-pictures.html

Is it just me or are elegance of the solution and complexity opposites? To me, the most elegant solution this the least complicated one that gets the job done.

The coolest 3D printed parts I’ve seen this year are 1965’s tank tread’s. They talked about them in this thread, but I don’t think they check CD much. You might want to PM ColmP, and see if they want to submit.

Does it have to be team? Can I post something I made on my personal printer? I would imagine not though.

I feel like this challenge is supposed to be 3d printed parts specifically for an FRC team, not just the coolest part made on a 3d printer*.

*It’d have to be pretty good to beat mine

Spot the printed parts :wink:

On our 2014 robot, we had these cylinder cartridges that were used to hold down our throwing arm(energy stick). They worked ok, but we printed out more just to be safe.

125 is gonna win this one.

2791 has a few cool 3D printed parts too - gearbox covers, a ball cradle, linkages, etc.

You say that and yet you haven’t seen 3824’s robot. For those of you that don’t know they use an almost entirely 3D printed robot. I don’t think they 3D printed everything this year, but I could hazard a guess it’s still a lot.

Just to answer a few questions:

You can submit parts for any FRC Game, preferably this year or last years game - sorry, no personal parts!

To further explain one rule, “Teams may only submit once”, it’s to prevent duplicate entries of the same exact part. Teams may enter multiple parts.

Don’t forget to send an email to [email protected] to submit your part or part(s).

Thanks for the honorable mention. After our printed frame cracked week 1 we knew we had to step away, regrettably, from all printed robots. We had a few printed parts for our pickup mechanism but they didn’t survive Palmetto. We still have no metal though… All pultruded fiberglass. Fell in love with the stuff. Light and durable.

I might have to ask you sometime about how you did things with the fiberglass. We tried that last year on our Orlando revision of our robot and we didn’t have the most fun with it.

No problem. We used pultruded fiber from Strongwell

It’s what fiberglass ladders are made of. You can get all sorts of shapes, tubes, sheets, plates… You can drill and cut it like aluminum. It has a high, but directional, specific strength. You can see some of the parts, as well as some printed parts, on our reveal video.

If anyone wants to see our printed bots, they are in this years Behind The Design book.

Sorry for late reply to this - I just realized I didn’t answer this in my last post!
For complexity I meant rather the complexity of the task and/or the amount of different ways it can be used. The part could be able to complete multiple tasks - i.e, two birds with one stone. The previous phrasing phrasing was bad, and I have edited in the main post.

Hmmm, those bevel gears on the intake look printed, along with the guides for the polycord. The wheel hubs look like it as well.

I’m a big fan of our encoder mounts this year. The clip just rides between our drive motors and supports our encoders while being retained to the shaft using these clamping couplings from Automation Direct.

I was just wondering if the parts have to currently be on the robot, or can I use ones from a previous iteration? Alternatively, I have a completely 3D printed, .254 scale, model of the robot: would that fit the criteria?

Thanks,

Has anyone tried 3D printed bevel gears for a low load high speed application like an intake? We talked about this but we were too nervous about it. I don’t know enough about the plastic properties to know if they’d be okay. I know you can buy nylon bevel gears, but I don’t know how they hold up.