Spectrum 2021-2022 Resource Collection

FIRST General Forum
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#1

Spectrum Training Curriculum - Link - CD Link - Youtube Playlist

We have been publishing our training slides and videos for over a year now. These are the primary way we have been teaching our team members in addition to hands-on sessions.

We have some new slides complete that don’t have videos to go along with them yet.

  • B2.4 3D Printing Training - Slides
  • B2.5 FRC 3D Printed Parts - Slides - Collection of ready to print FRC parts.
  • B3.1 Maintenance and Triage - Slides

Illuminations 2022 - Link

Spectrum has just finished our 2022 “Illuminations” guide, designed to help answer common questions and provide recommendations for young FRC teams.

Suggested FRC Purchases

Along with Pearadox FRC#5414, we are mentoring 10 Houston area FRC teams in the Houston FRC Development Program. For that program, we have put together a couple of documents with suggested purchases for young teams to buy now if they have a purchasing system that takes a long time. The quantities are just suggestions, and you may not need all of these items, but they are a good starting place. These were based on the suggested items list from our FRC MCC Guide, which has also had some minor updates.

FRC Prototyping Blocks - OnShape - PrusaPrinters STLs

These are 3D printable parts that are designed to allow FRC teams to prototype mechanisms quickly. They are inspired by the various 3D printable prototyping systems such as HYPEblocks, Quick Build Connectors, Protopipe, etc.

Spectrum 3847 FRC Prototyping Blocks
Spectrum 3847 FRC Prototyping Blocks1754×716 200 KB

FRC CAD Collection - Blog - Link - Submission Form - CD

We created a simple system for collecting public CAD models of FRC robots and mechanisms.

The FRC CAD Collection currently has over 540 links to robots from almost 200 teams.
Looking through the CAD of completed robots is one of the best ways to get better at designing FRC robots. You can be inspired by past mechanisms and build methods of teams around the world, many you may never be able to see in person.

CADcollection.Spectrum3847.org

Tech Documents Collection - Link - Submission Form

We are also collecting Tech Documents such as design notebooks, judge handouts, robot posters, build blogs, etc.

Programming Collections - CD - Projects Link - Library Link - Project Submission - Library Submssion

We are also collecting team programming projects and libraries.

Spectrum FIRST Choice and Voucher Guide 2022 - CD

We’ve put together our recommendations for FIRST Choice and the Virtual Kit of Parts Vouchers for this season.

Feedback Survey - Survey.Spectrum3847.org

If you have used any Spectrum Resources before, we’d love for you to tell us about your experience. This helps us know what to work on in the future, and we use quotes from here to help in our award submissions.

Other Resources

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How to make rough prototypes quickly?
Pearadox 2022 Summer "Task" blog
#2

New Battery tutorial video - https://youtu.be/MH9MQdLXEIE

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#3

Nice video, should be very helpful to teams! Your approach is very similar to how I’ve done it myself, the main difference is I use heatshrink tubing instead of electrical tape, and put on two layers of it on the battery side lugs. I also like to put heatshrink tubing on the SB50 side (overlapping the back of the contact and the cable insulation) just to stiffen that wire-connector lug interface a bit so the bare wire doesn’t take as much of the bending load.

#4

Another reason, I didn’t mention in the video, we stopped using heat shrink was we had two batteries damaged from excessive heat near the battery terminals in consecutive years. We could prevent this with better training but removing the heat from the process all together permanently fixes the problem.

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#5

In the vouchers section, I was wondering about TE Connectivity, I don’t see them listed under our listings of vouchers on my FIRST dashboard. Is the $25 in samples valid for everyone this year again? Worked great last year, so I was glad to see it in your list, and kudos to you all for sharing these resources.

#6

Can you expand upon and/or show what was done wrong with the heat shrink and what the effects were? We do recommend heat shrink in the Battery Basics article I helped write on frc-docs. I would be interested in potentially expanding it to include your learning / experience.

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#7

It is nice to not have to remove terminals from the SB50 to reapply. I think having unprotected battery terminals is a risk, so if you take the SB50 off to place a replacement heat shrink, I’d recommend only removing one at a time.

I’m sure it is nice to be less concerned to cover all the way to the bottom of the battery terminal, which is sometimes a small issue.

The con at least with electrical tape is that it doesn’t look as good and not as clean with the stickiness. The tape used above at least looked alright and was wide enough to cover the terminals in fewer wraps.

#8

I’ve definitely melted the thin ledges in the plastic casing near the terminal while applying heat shrink, but concluded it was aesthetic only as long as the terminal tab hadn’t moved. I can grab a photo next week.

I don’t know what the effects could be inside the battery tho, I have never tried to autopsy one.

#9

Both the TE and Digikey vouchers don’t need promo codes and they don’t appear in the Dashboard this year but they are on the kit of parts page with instructions to use them - Kit of Parts | FIRST

Our 2022 Voucher Guide covers these and some example ways to use them.

I don’t have any photos, if I remember I might try to replicate it on a battery that needs to be recycled anyway.

Basically if you apply enough heat the battery casing will start to bubble and it’s enough damage that I wouldn’t trust using it in our robot.

1 Like
#10

Heat shrink tubing should not require that much heat. Try starting with the heat gun further away and gradually bring it closer until the tubing can be seen to start shrinking and maintain that distance. If the heatshrink tubing is heated too much, it can split along it’s length.

It is easier to completely enclose the battery terminal using heatshrink tubing. We have worked out a way to get electrical tape between the terminals and the body of the battery using a small Allen key (around 1/16") so the terminals are completely enclosed but it is still tricky.

#11

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