Team 806 Build Blog, The Brooklyn Blacksmiths, Post #1

[Catch]

Hello Chief Delphi,

About us

We are The Brooklyn Blacksmiths located in Brooklyn, New York and this is our first buildblog. We are very excited to do this and plan to post about our progress in this new season. We want to talk about mechanical and programming progress done by other members and heads of subgroups, as well as community events.

Organization

Our team is organized into different subgroups including programming, impact, mechanical, and scouting. Our captains aid different subgroups, with each subgroup having a head to help teach and keep things on schedule. Team alumni come during our weekend meetings to help the team with strategies and new ideas. We use Fusion 360 to design the different parts of our robot digitally. We program the robot using Java.

Kickoff

On kickoff members our team went to Columbia University to receive the kit of parts and attend workshops. After the reveal of the CRESCENDO game we went straight to the game manual and rewatched the video to try and get the best ideas. In the beginning we were set on doing just speaker scores but have been exploring methods to also score in amp. We have also decided so far to have a fixed angle, variable speed shooter and an over the bumper intake that brings the Notes directly into the shooter, while also being able to pick up from human player stations. Alongside that we have an idea to either use pistons or linear actuators equipped with hooks for our means of climbing the chain. Our current CAD designs of the shooter and drivetrain are shown below, and are being currently worked on and ever evolving.

Shooter

On day one, after watching the game animation, our team began reading the rulebook and made a prototype for our note shooter. It is a fixed angle, variable speed shooter which allows us to shoot speaker, intake from the note source, and relay notes across the field. After prototyping with wood a metal and polycarbonate version is shown below. We are currently finding ways in which to mount it to our drive train.

Amp Model

Due to thinking of using an intake to shoot in the amp we have already built a model amp. We plan to make a simple speaker model in the future.

Programming

Currently our main programmer is working on developing autonomous mode for our swerve drive.

Competitions

We plan to attend the New York City Regional and Long Island Regional. Maybe one more?

Social Media

Here are our social media sites! We update our instagram the most but try to respond to most.

Instagram: frc806

Facebook: frc806

TikTok: frc806

Twitter/X: frc806

Contact us!

Email: [email protected]

Thanks,

Alexander Abad

[bscharles]

Looks like a great start, excited to see what 806 comes up with this season!

[Catch]

Team 806 Build Blog, The Brooklyn Blacksmiths, Post 2

Hello Chief Delphi,

Design Team

CAD

Many changes and additions to our CAD models have been made in the past week. We have designed the Fusion model of our intake. For the intake it is roller intake using 2 and a ¼” compliant wheels with .7 inches of compression for the note. It uses chain and sprockets along with a NEO motor.

After making intake and shooter models, we then worked on combining them together into one design. Our shooter will remain fixed in place at an angle with a rotating intake feeding it notes from the floor.

X-Carve

Our intake requires 3 polycarbonate sheets to hold bearings so we used our X-Carve. This allowed for precise cuts and holes that would line up, fitting a straight shaft for our intake.

Intake Model

With the polycarbonate parts cut out we were able to assemble our intake. With the shooter and intake being built we can start working on our drivetrain then working to attach our parts.

Wood Team

Previously we made the amp, but this week we worked on the source, teaching the basics of drilling, cutting, and screwing.

After receiving a shipment of wood we then worked on making the speaker. With only the stage left to build we started to place things in their correct spots, working to finish our playing field. When we receive another shipment of wood, we will finish the stage.

Programming Team

Our main programmer has worked to move code into new commands. Command based classes makes moving code there more reusable.

Impact Squad

We attended a New York Advocacy Zoom this Friday, hosted by New York team 1511, Rolling Thunder. Additionally on Friday we talked with Brazilian team 9110 Atomiic. We also are in the process of working on our impact presentation and executive summary.

Competitions

Our team can now confirm that we are additionally attending the South Florida Regional!

(I have wrote last weeks post kinda late, and our team has done a lot this week which will be shared in the next post)

Thanks,
Alexander Abad

[BryceHanson]

This looks great! We (and I’m sure many others) have a very similar setup. I’m really interested to see how y’all approach the climb and amp scoring, as those are the two things we’re struggling to effectively package.

On another note, I saw that your logo has gone through what seems to be a bit of JPG degradation over time. Figured I’d toss it into inkscape and clean it up a little. Not sure how much of the irregularity is intentional so I didn’t mess with any of that, but here you go!

[Catch]

Thanks for the logo fix! We have done more work with our intake to score amp but only have a rough idea to use pistons to climb.

[Catch]

Team 806 Build Blog, The Brooklyn Blacksmiths, Post 3

Hello Chief Delphi,

Design Team

Last week our team did a lot for our robot. We were tasked with only being able to apply things to our robot until last weekend. While we were not able to keep to this goal we will be done by this Friday to train our drivers.

Drivetrain

This year we reused a swerve drive system we used last year with good results. We swapped out the wheels for colson wheels which will hopefully last longer. We cut and placed in MAX tube in between for more sturdiness and connections to mount our parts.

Mounting

After building the structure of our drivetrain we worked on mounting the shooter and intake. We were able to put the shooter at an angle we could score. An issue we faced was how our intake could not rotate directly to the shooter due to the side panels on the shooter.

Redesign and Refit

Once we learned that the robot was too tall to fit under the chain, we decided to redesign the shooter slightly to both lower it and make it compatible with our intake. This involved us cutting a new top and bottom panel on X-Carve which took multiple redesigns. We also removed the shooter side panels, allowing the intake to fully rotate and exhaust into the shooter. Our climber and other modifications shown below will be explained further in week 4’s post.

Wiring

With mounting done we attached spark maxes to our motors and began construction on our electrical board. Our plan is to attach it above our belly plate with the battery in a case to stay snug.

Belly Plate

One of the main parts yet to be added to our robot is our belly plate which we planned to X-Carve out of steel. We worked on uploading the G code from Fusion 360 to Easel. We faced some difficulties with working out the design of the CAD to align the holes with the MAX tube in our drivetrain. To finish the plate we drilled through the holes that the X-Carve could not go in through completely.

Wood Team

We finished the final part of our playing field: the stage. With it having to carry 2, 125 pound robots, we had to use up a lot of wood and screws to prevent breakings. It was even able to carry our members! We added the trap elements but don’t plan to score it.

Bumpers

With the drivetrain mostly finished, members of our team went straight to work on our bumpers. Our bumper is built as an entire square frame with no splits.

Port Authority

Last Friday our members participated in the Port Authority event. In the past, thin cop cars used to travel through the alleys of tunnels. Our members’ challenge was to bring this idea back but with robots instead of cars. We had to CAD a hypothetical design for what they could look like. Part of our presentation even appeared on television.

Impact Squad

Our team is planning on hosting an FLL offseason competition. Our school also has a middle school which takes part in FLL. We plan on running the event with our members.

(I was think of making this post 3 ½ but instead will just have this weeks post soon )

Thanks,
Alexander Abad

[Catch]

Team 806 Build Blog, The Brooklyn Blacksmiths, Post #4

Hello Chief Delphi,

Much has happened between now and the last post. We finished our robot, went to our first regional, and participated at other events. Introducing our 2024 robot…

Mr. Worldwide!!

A feature not shown in our last post was our climber using two pneumatic cylinders. We had difficulties mounting it to the robot but were able to do it with the use of hose clamps. We additionally finished our bumpers, albeit some challenges fitting it on the robot. Along with finishing our bot we worked to make copies of our intake and shooter in case our on-robot parts get damaged, a project we called Ship of Theseus.

South Florida Regional

During our first regional in South Florida our team faced many challenges. Some issues we faced were motors (loctite had fallen in them), bumpers ( fit too tight and had to be drawn over to cover up an outline), as well as our code crashing due to a bad network. Another issue we had was a lack of driving practice which when combined with code issues led to our robot suffering during the games. Still, our robot was able to achieve much, being able to hang on the chain as well as score speaker and amp.

Unfortunately we were not picked for alliance selection. Despite these difficulties our team learned things which we will use for our next regional in Long Island and our last in New York. We learned what parts need the most repairs between games. We also learned that we have to change the climber height and spin rate.

After Competition

Pit Setup

When we got back from the competition one thing our team worked on was our pit layout. Our team’s pit focuses on organization with most of what we need sorted into three craftsman carts. In the picture below you can see an equity, diversity, and inclusion banner we were awarded during the competition due to all members completing an equity, diversity, and inclusion training class.

1:1 Gearbox

We are working on trying to convert our intake motor to a 1:1 gearbox. A difficulty we had had during the competition was having a smooth transition in moving our intake to the shooter. Our Intake was using a 3:1 gearbox and was not able to match the fast speed of our shooter due to different sizes of wheels. A way we are trying to fix is by making it go faster using a 1:1 gearbox. We are building a spacer in between, with an example of what it will look like shown below in CAD.

Showcase

Last weekend some members of our team went to Arumdaun Presbyterian Church, to an open field hosted by FRC teams 2896 and 9016, to test out the robot. Now that our robot works clearly one of our team’s main focuses is preparing our robot drivers for our next regionals.

FLL Regional Volunteering

Last month many members from our team took over a FLL qualifier. While not taking place in our school nor having our FLL team participating, our members ran the event. Our team is also working on hosting our own FLL offseason event at our school which we are calling the Blacksmith Bot Bash!

We have additionally been working on hosting an internet safety presentation for our local community center. By the time I send this out our team will already be competing at our second Long Island Regional which I hope to cover. We feel much more confident that our robot will move better.

Thanks,
Alexander Abad