Team SCREAM is excited to announce ourselves as a new member of the openalliance ! We have greatly benefited from build threads in the past and would like to contribute by offering our own knowledge and content. We hope that we can be a source of inspiration and discussion for many teams.
We are a team from Sedalia, Missouri comprised of 50+ students from Smith-Cotton High School. Team SCREAM (4522) was established in 2013 and Team SCREAM Jr. (4766) in 2022. We are very lucky to have 16+ mentors, some of whom have returned as Alumni. We have attended the World Championships all but one year.
Student Responses
The following student leaders will be contributing to this thread as well.
Here’s a little background on our team compiled by our team captain, Parker.
Why are we an Open Alliance?
Team SCREAM has always been focused on making a competitive robot. Over the last few years we have made significant improvements to our team, and we are only getting better. We want to focus more on our outreach, and we believe that joining the Open Alliance will allow us to give back to and connect with a community that we have greatly benefited from.
Our History
Rookie Year: 2013
Regional Wins: 8 (4522-6, 4766-2)
Championship Division Finalist: 2
Woodie Flowers Finalist: 1
Autonomous Award: 3
Quality Award: 3
Creativity Award: 1
Industrial Design Award: 3
Innovation in Control Award: 1
Excellence in Engineering Award: 5
Gracious Professionalism Award: 1
Team SCREAM Jr.
For the 2021 season, we decided not to participate in any Virtual Events. Instead, we created our own custom game and split Team SCREAM into four smaller teams. Each team built and competed against each other with their own robot. We weren’t sure how building four robots would turn out, but we quickly noticed the benefits. Generally, younger students do not get the chance to make big contributions to a robot, which results in a lack of experience. With a sub-team of 20-30 engineers, it can be hard to give everyone a task or job, and having more robots provided students with the ability to dive deeper than ever before. There was no way we could go back to just one robot after 2021, so Team SCREAM Jr. was created in 2022.
Original Idea:
If you want to read more about how we operate our program with two teams check out this thread: 1 or 2 teams? - #23 by mrwright
2022 Season
For our 2022 season, we set expectations for Team SCREAM Jr. (4766). The team was composed of mainly 9th and 10th graders. They were to build a robot with simple mechanisms, and their goal was primarily to be a developmental team . The drive team and pit crew were swapped out at every regional in order to give younger students the opportunity to be a part of those teams.
During this year, 4766 built a low-goal shooter with a swerve drive, and were capable of climbing to the mid rung. Team SCREAM (4522) built a high and low goal shooter with a swerve drive. 4522 had a reliable traversal climb that made them a solid pick in alliance selection.
4766 was rank 10 at the Heartland Regional and 3 at the Central Missouri Regional.
4522 was rank 3 at Oklahoma, 5 at Heartland, 1 at Central Missouri, and 20 in the Hopper Division.
Overall, Team SCREAM came home with two blue banners won by 4522.
2023 Season
For 2023, we were determined to make it onto Einstein. We adopted an “Einstein Mentality” and a new motto of becoming “1% Better”. We believed that making improvements to small areas could have a drastic impact on our team. We had a goal of improving this season… and we definitely achieved that goal in a lot of areas.
This year, 4766 completely shattered our expectations for the Junior team. We had always believed that they would eventually win a regional but never thought it would be due to defeating us. Then they did it twice!
4522 built our most competitive robot to date. We ranked 1 at Arkansas, 2 at Central Missouri, and 1 at Bayou. At Championships we ranked 8 on the newton Division.
Two of our designers on Team SCREAM recently reverse engineered the continuous elevator from Team 4414’s 2023 robot Tsunami. Thank you @jjsessa and 4414 for sharing your write up.
It is currently being machined, in the meantime, here is our CAD: OnShape
Our kickoff weekend was a success. On Saturday, we gathered with our extended Team SCREAM family, including families, alumni, and supporters, to eagerly watch the game reveal. After an engaging session, we enjoyed lunch together before diving into the game manual.
Following the initial excitement, most of the team departed at 2:00 pm to process the details of the game and manual at home. A small group of students, comprising our strategic design committee, stayed behind. This committee, consisting of strategy team members, select leaders, and design experts, worked diligently on both Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Their focus was on comprehending the broader aspects of the game and formulating a plan for Week 1 of the build season.
On Monday afternoon, this strategic committee team will lead discussions with the rest of the group, presenting their strategic insights. They also organized the prototype plans for the upcoming week.
Strategy Update
Some of our early takeaways from the game are:
Keep the Amplification bonus constantly active.
Do not flood the floor with Notes in your Source Zone.
Design Considerations
Wear and tear on Notes will affect shot accuracy.
Should we drive over Notes or have bumpers low to ground to prevent driving over them?
If you’re not low enough to drive under chains your robot may as well be max height.
Notes must not get caught/stuck on our robot.
Robot Archetypes
Team SCREAM 4522- A versatile bot focusing on scoring in the Speaker, Amp and Trap, with effective climbing capabilities, likely a full-height bot.
Team SCREAM Jr. 4766- An Amp specialist with climbing and Trap scoring abilities.
Field Elements
Our team prioritizes building field elements before major design decisions. We’ve completed wooden Speaker and Amp models to use in our shop and are developing a segment of the Stage for climbing and Trap scoring. Our practice facility will soon have a full size field with all elements that will allow us to host practice matches with local teams.
Week 1 is a whirlwind of excitement and hustle for Team SCREAM. Despite our efforts to grasp the game dynamics in the initial days, the constant influx of ideas and insights from other teams always keeps us on our toes, prompting quick adaptations and modifications to our strategies and robot concepts. It’s a dynamic process of learning and evolving as the week unfolds.
While school cancellations due to inclement weather have slightly impacted our prototyping pace, we’ve utilized this time to effectively develop our robot architecture. Here’s a glimpse into the concepts we’re exploring:
4522 Robot
Shooter mounted on elevator
Able to shoot up into the speaker
Able to shoot down into Amp and Trap
Continuous belt-driven elevator
Under the bumper intake that hands off to the shooter in the docked/home position
Winch climber that can pull robot to top of bumpers to reach trap
Stabilizing bars to stabilize on stage while climbing
Here are some block CAD renders that show the robot geometry.
As we move from proof of concept to implementation we will need to get creative with packaging to ensure both functionality and robustness. Considering the potential for high-speed collisions at this end of the robot, durability is a top priority in the design process.
As of right now that prototype doesn’t center the note like we would like it to, however you can pretty much intake it at any distance from the center. Currently we are working on a new intake prototype to center the note while we intake it.
how does that end up reaching the trap? it looks like your hooks are at the top of the 1st stage and the chain is at the bottom. not to mention its fully extended.
sincere question as im trying to figure out how to do similar
We are still working on the CAD for that, but as of right now the plan is for the hooks to be attached to stage one of the elevator and whenever we go to climb they will detach from the elevator and hook onto the chain. From there we will winch the hooks down to our chassis in order to climb. We will share more about our climbing concept and mechanism whenever we have prototypes to share.
Looks great! Our team is doing something quite similar. I was wondering if you had a plan to prevent the belts from your continuous elevator from snapping while bearing the entire weight of the robot, as belt snapping was a big problem for us last year.
We won’t be climbing from our elevator belts. They will just be used to operate the elevator and shooter.
We were planning to have detachable hooks that were attached to our elevator stage. We would use the elevator to attach the hooks to the chains and then they would detach when we pulled the elevator down. We would then use a separate winch gearbox to lift the robot from the ground.
