Hello again.
I suppose I’m a little late in delivering this, but better late than never, right?
A few weeks ago I was infected with the pneumatics bug. That is, after doing reasonably well at the Clifton district event, more importantly, seeing the other robots and their shooters, I became confident in our ability to implement a pneumatic shooter. To do that, however, would mean that we needed to learn about all about pneumatics, from scratch, in the short span of a week. So, I turned my attention to CD and sent out a request (well, multiple) for help, and I was simply amazed by the response I received. I posted my first thread at 1:00 AM EST, and by the morning there were already enough responses that it took me a significant amount of time to absorb all of the new information; I was thoroughly impressed.
After some discussion in those threads, I felt that I learned the basics - at least, enough to build a basic pneumatic system. Luckily, I was not alone in this process either. cglrcng guided me step by step through the setup and was available at any time during the prototyping process. Any remaining or late night questions were answered with extreme swiftness here on CD. The upshot of all of this is that by the time the weekend was over (following a week of education), we had a half-working shooter.
A little more testing in the build lab in the week before the Bridgewater competition revealed a few issues with our setup; namely, the ball was slipping off the ramp we built, though that was quickly remedied. The high flow solenoids we ordered resulted in a significant increase in power. In other words, we had a functional shooter prototype finished right before we left for Bridgewater. We installed all of the high pressure circuit and a bit of the low pressure side onto the robot before leaving; all we had to do then was install the cylinders and solenoids on the robot. Trivial, right?
Well, sort of. Having a battery and a breaker on the robot meant that our prototype was slightly different from the actual robot, which meant a slight design change was needed. However, that’s nothing we didn’t prepare for; a few long spans between matches gave us uninterrupted time to work on the robot. The inspectors and other volunteers were immensely supportive in this process; they knew what we were doing and inspected the pneumatics of our robot as soon as possible so that we may get onto the field with a functional system. When we had small problems with the wiring ($@#$@#$@#$@# you PWM cables), a CSA helped us diagnose and resolve the issue.
Of course, you can’t have a FIRST competition without coopertition. Our alliance partners from Clifton (Teams 1626 and 869), as well as Team 224, all lent their assistance in getting us to where we were at the end, whether it was in the form of advice, extra hands, or parts. However, I’m sure there are other teams that I’m forgetting, and I do apologize for that.
Unfortunately, we didn’t make eliminations at that event, though we did end up as 1st seat backup. We looked at the silver lining and realized that this meant that we now had a BUNCH OF TIME to work on our robot! So, we finished what remained of the shooter. Lo and behold, in our first configuration of the cylinders …
WE COULD SHOOT OVER THE TRUSS!
Further testing proved that we could also get it into the high goal.
Even further testing proved that we could do these very, very reliably with a high degree of accuracy in the shots.
In other words, our shooter was a success.
And now, it’s time to head off to MAR regionals to prove that with a little bit of hard work yourself and a lot of support and assistance from others (read: CD and other teams).
Thank you once again everyone for your support; as a team 1257 has learned and gained so much these past few weeks, and we are certainly going to be a stronger team because of it. Individually, I’ve discovered a passion for compressed air :D, and none of this would’ve been possible without you guys. I really can’t thank you enough.
Ever grateful,
Hades