Inspiration drawn from 179, 180/1986, 254/118, 1114, and 1102’s past robots can be seen if you’ve studied as hard as we have.
Looking forward to being the first one’s on the field this year in week 0.5 at Palmetto, and then Orlando after that.
Love the design! I can see some of the aspects from those teams. Do you guys have a way to shoot high goal? Or am I missing some type of hidden shooter?
No inspiration from 973? 
That cylinder you see on the bottom of the 2x1 is a 3/4" bore pneumatic cylinder puncher that we’ve tested that perfectly suits out high goal shooting needs. Our CAD seen here isn’t the final revision, but just a preview of some of the major features.
Nice, sorry I didn’t catch that the first time. Looks like a quality design. Do you guys have any worries of your arm bending at the back pivot point if the arm was all the way up and you hit another robot or defense at high speed?
I’ll take that as a challenge to name all the inspirations 
179: the octagonal Drivetrain with the non-inline wheels. Not sure what year it was from. 973 is also probably another inspiration for this drive, considering the name.
180/1986: Mecanum wheels used for intaking, as done on their 2012 and 2014 robots, respectively.
254/118: Not really sure about this one, besides the use of boxtubing.
1114: Lots here. The SS concept of putting a ball in a claw with rollers on the top. Also, it looks like your claw has some strong 1114 2011 influence in its shape.
1102: never heard of them, sadly, so I can’t say anything about it.
How close was I?
Anyways, great design. Best of Luck!
2005 was the year 179 made that robot.
I think the 1102 inspiration is just the style of construction, they seem to use a lot of extrusion and tubing.
How multi-functional is that arm? Does it manipulate any of the gates?
I love the 179 throwback to fit on the Batter
No canburglar this year eh?
sits in corner
weeps
Thanks for being such a strong American patriot with participating in the Week .5 event this year. Already have the kettle corn in the build room.
The only octagonal frame I’ve seen personally, and specifically the one we looked at when designing this frame was the 179 frame. Funny enough they will be at Palmetto with us this year.
Right on all counts for the Mechanum wheels.
As for the 118/254 inspiration I guess I’ll just spill the beans. Number 1 being chain in tube for our drive-train. We’re using 1x3 tubing this year for a couple of reasons paramount being we didn’t build custom gearboxes. Second thing is a bit harder to see in this picture and is a much larger feature of our robot. Our gears that drive our arm have a slot latching system that has been used by 254 on their t-shirt cannon, and 118 on their 2014 robot. It serves several purposes in maintaining fluid control of our robot’s shooter and gives multidimensional support to our arm as it goes over defenses. It also as you can imagine can prevent the arm from back-driving when needed. There are a few things missing in regards to supporting the versa-planetary that drives the arm, but we as a team have experience with torturing versa-planetaries and know they can withstand what we intend to throw at them.
Right on the mark with the SS concept from 1114.
As for 1102, they had a great robot in 2008 and that was the robot shown to me to recruit me to join 1102 the following year, but the main thing I’m taking from my experience working on that robot myself was the pneumatic puncher.
Thanks, and yes it can manipulate some of the gates. The Drawbridge, and Chival du Fries should be easy with it. We don’t have the space in our build space to test them until the competition, but mathematically and geometrically that’s the multi-functionality it was designed to have.
You mean Dumbo on a stick? LOL
Hahahaa it was a fun idea the kids had, but it didn’t pan out. The 1275:1 gearbox it used was really good though, and it’d going to be potentially used on a climber for this robot. Just not included in the CAD model because we’re forgoing the climb at least for Palmetto.
Week 0.5 will be… fun ???
John’s not the only one that can spill some beans…
No worse than any other appendage any other year. We knew from the Team Cockamamie Ri3D build that being a little butt-heavy was a good thing anyway, and we wanted to give ourselves the best chance at the 15" rule for the climb if we got that far.
Truth be told, the team that came up first in our discussions was 1503, and how their human-load-only strategy in a field of floor pickups was refined enough to get them to Einstein. Swamp Thing came pretty early in the mix, because we knew any cycling strategy was dependent on getting past defenders and we knew we needed to be skinny anyway to keep the triple climb option open. (And I remember being a college freshman on 1293 having to play opposite those guys at Palmetto. Twice. With Tytus driving. Still gives me heartburn.) We knew we had the resources to make it feasible, so this was the year to make a run for it.
We actually prototyped with the Team Cockamamie robot and a wood projection on the front to act like the octagonal frame, just to see if an octagonal frame done that way would clear defenses. (We didn’t want to be wider, for reasons already stated, so it had to be the front for us.) It wasn’t, so we went to chain-in-tube. It’s the first time anyone affiliated with us has ever attempted it, but we studied a lot of things on ChiefDelphi and COTS parts makers and felt confident making the jump. The sprockets are Team 221 hex-bore shafts, and we’re using 1x3 tubing because we needed to run a drop that 221’s 1x2-based SimpleTube chassis doesn’t allow for. Cheesy Poofs would probably laugh (in the most gracious way possible) at some of our first-timer mistakes, but we’re very happy with the result and there’s plenty of room for optimization this off-season. We’re already discussing bringing a Sandstorm Pi (because it’s between 3 and 4) to SCRIW.
We beat our heads against the shop wall for almost a couple weeks on the shooter–a leftover Rocket Box from the Ri3D build was almost called in for a winch-back linear punch, which would’ve been even more Simbot SS than the current plan…but then on a lark someone dug out a long-stroke pneumatic cylinder that I’d picked up on my trip to MidKnight Mayhem 2014. (Was that 222 that gave out all the cylinders their sponsor dumped on them? Whoever you were, thank you!) Sure enough, it’s got a nice pop to it.
We haven’t tested it against the actuated defenses yet, but Cheval de Frise and Portcullis shouldn’t be problematic.
We still have the milled PVC pipe for that–it was the first linear bearing we tried to simulate the punch with. That whole setup was full Clarkson: Ambitious, but rubbish. I think our ambitions are much better-aimed this time around, and we’re pretty optimistic about this one breaking the Columbia teams’ collective drought in Myrtle Beach.
(True story: Through a series of circumstances, I was asked to be the defense coordinator at Palmetto this year. I told our RD, “So you want me to do a job that’s never been done before, at the largest regional in FIRST, with all of headquarters watching?” He replied “Yeah, that’s about what I’m asking.”)
It was us–and glad we could help
Great looking concept. Looking forward to watching it on the streams on week 0.5!
Definitely seeing the inspiration from 180. Also, loving the design of your drive train. Very unique!
Can’t wait to see how it performs at Orlando!
I got the 22 right!
That cylinder was also on the ill-fated canburglar we ran on Sandstorm II–just enough stroke to cinch down on two…in theory. A bizarre vise-grips accident (you really do have to tell freshmen everything…) demoted it to disaster spare if even that this year, but it’s traveled a lot of miles and done a lot of good.
That is funny. We have the exact same thing on our bot. We have ran it quite a bit and can attest it works well.
Way to not credit Darude.
*(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBGSFI4_-MA)
(No really, that’s where we got the name from–Sandstorm has become the traditional song for kickoffs at Williams-Brice Stadium. Even when the flooding last October moved our game with LSU to Baton Rouge, they played it in Death Valley since we were the home team of record.)*
