REV Robotics - 2022/23 Product Releases & Updates

FIRST General Forum
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741

Hey friends!

We’ve been running the REV ION wheels all season - 5in traction wheels and 5in omnis (4x2 configuration). Some general feedback for the REV team on these products:

  • The 5in traction wheels are perfect for a tank drive robot. We do parallel plate, and these wheels were quite simply freaking awesome. The tread wear-in and aging process gets the wheels more sticky and is reminiscent of colsons. Being able to buy these wheels in 5in diameter without having to perform a ritual sacrifice to buy a 5in colson and make it have a hex bore. After 3 events of very hard driving, we have 1 wheel that has begun to de-laminate (and we have screws ready to go just in case).
  • The 5in omnis are not durable. After one event of lots of charge station cycles, rollers had started to fall off. We can’t replace just a single roller, since they aren’t for sale. We replaced the wheels between our 2 district events, but didn’t have the time to replace between WPI and DCMP (as they were only 3 days apart). At DCMP we resorted to harvesting the rollers off of a 6in VEX omni we got from 238 (thanks friends!) and replacing them ourselves.

I would really love if y’all sold omni rollers individually. Buying a whole new omni isn’t a desirable outcome when replacing the rollers is relatively easy, and significantly cheaper. We can even replace the rollers without taking a drive rail off!

Other than those 2 notes, every REV product we’ve used this year has been no hesitations awesome, and we would happily run all of them again. Great work!

8 Likes
742

Had a similar experience with the 6in Omnis but cracked the metal plate on the wheels. Figured we put a lot of stress on them, as the shafts were also bending, due to the weight of the robot off the charge station. Switched to some Vex Omnis we had in shop for District Championship and didn’t have any issues.

If we use the omnis again we would need to put checking the screws holding the plate to the wheel on our checklist. I am thinking they backed out causing the wheel itself to crack and/or enough leverage to break the metal.

Having individual replacement parts to rebuild wheels would be great as realistically I only need a few wheel centers and a dozen or so rollers to rebuild 4 wheels at this point.

Rest of the ION stuff has been great when we weren’t doing something stupid.

1 Like
743

Can you send pictures of how you had rollers break? I’m surprised this happened without the outside metal ring plate breaking.

I know in previous seasons (2019 comes to mind) we (33) routinely broke rollers and chunks of the plastic hub off our Omni wheels. This was a driver for the metal ring plate design on the new ION wheels.

744

You wouldn’t run the 5V line to the PWM power pin, which would be especially bad for both the RIO and your regulator since that rail is 6V. What you would do would be to run 5V and ground to your regulator and signal and ground to your roboRIO.

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745

ohhh so power isn’t connected to the rio just signal and ground. That makes more sense

746

most of the wear I’ve seen on our 6in omnis is when our end effector was sitting on them and we tried to move. So not the fault of REV. maybe we’ve had some wear on the back omnis (we’re running 4 omnis) but it hasn’t been so bad we needed to replace them

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747

We have been waiting on the Max 90’s. We have two on our robot and would like a spare in case one breaks. We have plans for what to do, but it isn’t ideal. So if you have one that works we would love to get it from you in Houston.

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748

Can you believe that the Championship is next week? I have a few updates for you, mostly around championship support.

As in Previous years REV will have 2 booths at the Championship

  • FRC - in the robot service center which is located on the back side of the bleachers near the loading docks this year.
  • FTC - In the pit area on the 3rd floor

At both of these booths, we will have REV staff to help answer questions, provide trouble shooting help, spare parts, some swag, and some other fun games you will have to come see us to learn more.

Spare parts at Championship- we are bringing quite a bit of support materials, but please note that the priority is going to go to teams who need things to keep their robot going in the competition, so we won’t be able to replace things that broke at previous events or give you spares for you to have in the event that something breaks. If you have any any issues with a REV product during the season please reach out to our support team and we will make sure we take care of you. We will have items that are out of stock on our website like (MAX90, MAXSwerve, etc)

Ship to Pit - This ends today, so anything you would like to order and have delivered to you needs to be ordered by 3pm CST on 4/13. Please don’t wait to the last minute. REV is not able to sell any parts at the championship, so please keep that in mind.

New Products - REV will have some new stuff on display at our FRC booth. It isn’t as many new items as last year’s ION launch, but we always like to show you some things we are working on and get your feedback as we move to preparing for next season.

REV DUO Curriculum - We have been working on a new robotics curriculum so you can take our products into the classroom. We will have some basic information in our booths about this at championship, if you are interested in this for your school please come visit us or reach out to [email protected] This new curriculum is Free and fully standards aligned.

Power Distribution Hub voltage display - This one has taken a while for us to figure out exactly what is going on and how we will handle the situation. Look for more updates about it for after the championship. Please note that the display itself has no impact on the device working or other internal features, the issue is related to a rounding problem on the chip behind the display itself and not the other logic inside the device. We will work with teams to fix the issue, but it is something we need to do after the Championship is over. We appreciate your patience on this issue.

Stock updates
MAX90 - Will be coming back into stock late April/Early May
MAXSwerve - Early May (at the same time we will also be making the individual parts available for service).
Control Hub /Expansion hubs - These will be back in stock this summer and plenty of stock for the fall.
EDU Kits - As soon as Control hubs are available these will also be available.

I look forward to seeing all the teams next week, Championship is kinda crazy, but its still one of my favorite times of the year!

12 Likes
749

If there’s a software aspect to this, have you considered integrating any of it with FRC-docs? The rules have relaxed greatly w.r.t. including vendor-specific code in the official examples.

750

Our curriculum is written around the Control hub and our DUO product line so I don’t think there is much of a reason to include it in the FRC docs. It is very possible to port some of the things we have been doing to an ION set of parts if there is enough interest in an FRC curriculum.

9 Likes
751

Hey Nick!

Here’s some roller fail pictures. The shots with the roller axles missing are missing there because we were replacing rollers and got half way through the process. The rollers usually just degraded to the point of breaking and coming straight off the wheel.

Hope this helps! Happy to answer any questions.

PXL_20230420_223141250
PXL_20230420_2231412501920×2550 335 KB

PXL_20230420_223206062
PXL_20230420_2232060621920×2550 264 KB

PXL_20230420_223139199
PXL_20230420_2231391991920×2550 382 KB

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752

Hi! If we ordered maxtube grid pattern right now, would there be scribe lines?

MAre there plans on increasing the thickness of the thin side for the thick grid and is there an eta on when that would happen?

Thanks

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753

Hey @Greg_Needel is there an update on this yet?

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754

any changes to MAXTube won’t roll out until the fall. If you order now you will get the same as everyone during the season.

Due to inventory, it is possible we will release updated versions under new part numbers, if not it will be clearly indicated on product pages if/when there is a change.

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755

The transparency with Rev is really appreciated!!

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756

Hey, Greg, while you’re here, are there any more definite lead times for MAX Swerve, or are we still looking at early May?

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757

Based on the activity in this thread (and personal experience), it seems like REV could benefit from a stock status page. Just knowing if something is gonna be back in stock next week, or 3-5 weeks from now is really helpful for planning during the build season.

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758

And during the off-season too.

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759

Yes, The final parts are being finished this week and we expect to have these available in the next couple weeks

I agree, and this is something we should be able to be better at in the future. part of our growth as a company has put new people and processes in place so we can have better tracking of all of our products. We added a key member of our team a couple months ago to focus manage supply chain (previously multiple people were doing parts of this job) - forecasting, mfg dates and lead-times are major parts of their job so we know when things are coming and we have minimal gaps in stock. We are also doing a huge ERP/MRP roll out inside of REV right now, which will replace many of the stand alone SAS products we use making tracking products through the stages of manufacturing easier.

Once we get a bit farther down the road I feel confident that this will allow us to give greater transparency with when things are going to be re-stocked. How we display that information is still up in the air, but I would LOVE to just put that info out there (and not get pings on Discord or FB messenger in the middle of the night with stock update requests).

39 Likes
760

Does the swerve modules being in stock soon mean the metal wheel hubs will be available for purchase as well?