Was there any extra bill for import, or was the price as-quoted?
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Price was as quoted, it got inspected at the port of Houston so had about a 5 day delay from what the vendor told me, but it didn’t cost us anything extra.
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Someone pointed out in a DM that there is a slight difference between the truss we purchased and the official field truss from Total Structures.
The official truss has 3 cross bar on each truss segment and ours only has two.
4ft
5ft
This could make some field builds slightly difficult.
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Counterbore Drill Bit
One cool tool we’ve never talked about is the counterbore drill bit. The tool easily lets you center and cut a 0.35 in hole (socket-head through hole) on a 0.2 in hole (#10 clearance hole). For example, we were able to cut socket-head through holes in our elevator MAXTube rails so that we could bolt from inside of the tube.
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Open Houses
Recently, Spectrum hosted open houses for our parents, and faculty and staff from each of our schools. Inspired by 581’s lab crawl presentations during the FIRST Mentor Conference this past August, we created presentations highlighting different aspects of what we do on the team for those in our community who may not know much about what their students do. We had a main presentation, then broke out into small groups, rotating through 4 presentations hosted in our three spaces, and an additional classroom.
Competitions and Strategy (Computer Lab)
Design and Manufacturing (Machine shop/assembly space)
Awards, Outreach, and Media (Classroom)
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As someone who is not that experienced with tapping equipment, would you be able to post links or product names do the items that you bought so that you can use 10-32 taps on this machine? Also after almost a year of use would you recommend this machine to other teams?
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Pneumatic Tapping Setup
The pneumatic tapping machine (Innovative Uses: VEVOR's Tapping Machines Beyond Conventional Manufacturing) definitely makes tapping shafts much faster. Additionally, it’s very easy to use and train students on. It allowed us to change our designs to incorporate many more tapped standoffs. It does take a large air supply we run at around 120psi and it uses a good amount of CFM through an 8mm ID hose.
Non-clutched Collet
This is the collet we used for the past season. This doesn’t have a clutch so you can break a tap inside it. We broke a few over the season.
- Non-Clutched #10 Collet - https://amzn.to/4er4KYS
Clutch Collet
We ordered these last month and haven’t used them yet but they have an adjustable clutch so we should break fewer taps.
- Clutched standard collet set - https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805817265965.html
Taps
These are the spiral point, chip clearing taps that we use with this station - McMaster-Carr
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Do you have a video of it in use, or should I refer to the manufacturer?
Allen forgot to mention the best part. When you use it, you feel like Guido
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Video from last season.
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We need your help
Hi all, If y’all could take like 5 minutes to fill this form out, we’re doing a family feud for Spectrum, and your input would be awesome.
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Not gonna lie this sounds super fun. You should share the results of the poll afterwards, I’m very curious as to what people have to say.
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The tie down from the top of the elevator was inside of the final stage tube with a spring in tensile. The third spool is for a pull down that was located outside of the elevator which also had a redirect which probably was not in release cad.
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Team REV
We’re thrilled to announce that Spectrum 3847 is continuing our partnership with REV Robotics for the third consecutive year, proudly representing Team REV once again! As we gear up for this season, we’re excited to continue making an impact both on and off the field. Our partnership with REV Robotics allows us to bring more resources to our community, reach underserved groups, and provide support where it’s needed most.
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Spectrum Cart 2.0
We’ve been using a version of this cart since 2021-2022. We have two of them now, and are likely making a third soon. Also on our website https://cart.spectrum3847.org/
Onshape Link
Features
- Small footprint: at 2ft x 3ft, it is legal to go onto the field if needed.
- Adjustable: can easily change the height of the robot for tall robots, etc. We screw in 2 4x4 wood blocks to the top rails to place the robot on; this supports it well and doesn’t scratch the belly pan much.
- Swerve Access: The cart doesn’t have a top deck so we can easily work on our swerve modules under our robot while it is is on the cart. Wheel swaps, cleaning, etc are very easy.
- Collapsible: By removing a few bolts, the robot rails can be removed and the handle can fold down. This made it easy for us to ship it with our robot and pit supplies to Chezy Champs in 2023. Can also fit in most car trunks.
- Customizable: Can easily mount other accessories to the cart. We have made mounts to attach our driver station to the handle side. We have thought about others such as water bottle holders, etc. but haven’t made them.
- Common FRC Build Materials and Practices: uses the same techniques, materials, and fasteners that we use to build our robots.
- Bottom shelf with lip: The rail on the bottom shelf prevents items from rolling off; we can have bolts and tools down there without them falling off as we move.
Photos
Materials
- 1x1 Square Extrusion: can use pre-punched or regular and add a few holes. We have used REV 1x1 for both our carts. (#TeamREV)
- 90 degree and T gussets: can use any vendor or custom make them. Can use 90s for all of them if you want.
- ⅜” or ½” Plywood base: Simple rectangle cut out with some holes for the casters.
- ⅞” Round tube: for the handle with star nuts pressed in. Could use more square tube but it’s not as comfortable to push/pull.
- 4x swivel+locking casters: Having all 4 wheels swivel and brake is pretty convenient for sliding through narrow pits, etc. The 5” wheels are a good compromise on size. We prefer solid wheels to pneumatic so we never have to deal with flats or blow outs. We bolt them on with 10-32 hardware and washers so that we always have easy access to those tools or spare hardware if needed. These are similar to what we use - PRITEK 5 inch Caster Wheels Bearing 1800lbs 4 Pack Heavy Duty Rubber Plate Casters All with Safety Brake No Noise Lockable Swivel Casters (Include 16pcs Screws): Amazon.com: Industrial & Scientific
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How we Open Alliance
Purpose: Your blog should be informative and helpful to other teams. Consider what other teams want to learn about your robot design and build process. Avoid using jargon that other teams may not understand, and avoid sharing fluff.
What to post:
Here are some ideas!
- Design process: Your brainstorming sessions, robot ideas in the early build season, CAD drawings, and simulations.
- Testing: Instrumental in early build season- prototype videos, videos of old bots interacting with new game pieces, etc
- Problems/obstacles you’re facing and what you’re trying to fix them
- Lessons learned: Things that went well, things that didn’t, and things you would do differently next time.
- Posts you can make consistently like event recaps and weekly design recaps
- Training: Odds are that if you are training people on your team about something, someone else is as well.
When to post:
- We run our build blogs based on the calendar year. This way all content for a single game will be located in the same thread. So our 2025 blog will start in January. This also allows people just coming for our early season content can find it quickly.
- The Open Alliance recommends posting at least once a week. Posting short blogs frequently is preferred to posting long blogs every few weeks or months. Posting more often early in the season is more useful as those are the most critical days for prototyping.
- Posts during the early build and competition seasons are especially useful and engaging to other teams!
Format:
Use headings, subheadings, and bullet points to break up your text and make it easy to scan. Include images and videos to illustrate your points.
Feedback:
Encourage readers to leave feedback and ask questions. More importantly, always answer questions people leave on your blog.
Good things:
- Photos and videos. At least half of your post should visually be photos and videos.
- Not sharing all the details. Choosing to leave everything simple 1) cuts down on your word count/blocks of text and 2) encourages people to ask questions, turning the blog into a discussion. For example, in this post, we said we liked the “information diet” rule, people asked about it, and we sent several more messages about it. We could have chosen to elaborate fully in the first post, but it would have added several paragraphs of text and discouraged further questions.
- Templates aren’t needed (they can make posts repetitive), but they can help start the writing process. For example, we roughly follow this template for event recaps.
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Sharing resources on your blog
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Having a section dedicated to all of your active resources, such as CAD, GitHub, photo library, etc, will make your blog the one-stop shop for anyone looking for more info about your robot
Spectrum 3847 | Build Blog 2023 -
Draft your build blog on a Google doc and use Smart Spell Checkers such as Grammarly to get rid of any errors and to make it easy to understand.
Things to avoid:
- Large blocks of text. Instead, chop off unneeded sentences, rearrange them into bullet points or small paragraphs, and use helpful pictures to break up the text.
- “Spoilers”/Hide Details. Some people just won’t read it. Here’s an example of what we mean.
Summary
Secret info only a few people will read.
- Avoid posting mundane content. A whole post that can be summarized as “We kept building the robot” isn’t valuable for the reader and will cause people to stop returning. Keeping posts interesting and useful will encourage readers to come back.
- Ignoring Feedback: If readers take the time to comment or ask questions, avoid ignoring them. Engagement is key to building a successful build blog.
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The War of Art - Professional vs Amateur
We had our first Spectrum Summitt this weekend and one of the topics that we discussed was the difference between a Professional vs. an Ametaur. I wrote some notes from the book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. I think these are a good guide to what the Professionalism part of “Gracious Professionalism” refers to.
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