The Open Alliance - 2023 Highlights

[Connor_H]

The Open Alliance has expanded to more than 70 teams across Chief Delphi and Discord for 2023. This has resulted in a lot of awesome content, but with so much being put before you it is near impossible to see it all. We are bringing back Weekly Highlights to try and make it more digestible for everyone. We will aim to have a highlights post up at the end of each week. We are also working with FIRST Updates Now and FRC 6328 to bring video recaps of the Open Alliance on a weekly basis.

We have created a form to submit content through so that all the highlights can be compiled to one weekly post. If you see something you think is cool, useful, or unique, please submit.

2023 Open Alliance Highlights Submissions

[Connor_H]

Week 1 Highlights

95: Adhesives and Superstructure

FRC 95 The Grasshoppers 2023 Build Thread

Let’s talk about gluing stuff. In a sidebar with @Brandon_Holley (by extension the 125 kids) and @HDrake we discussed how to bond inserts into composite tubing. A lot of good information was centralized in that conversation, and @AllenGregoryIV had the great suggestion to share it with the larger community. Let’s start with some basics: adhesives are best used in shear, not peel/tension. Think about how easy it is to peel tape if you pull up vs pulling parallel to the surface its stuck to. To …

FRC 95 The Grasshoppers 2023 Build Thread

Lots of things going on. I’m going to post a general overview and tag my students to expand on their respective sections. Our over-arching design goals are: -Fast and chaotic (@Kevin_Leonard) e.g. short cycle time with a flexible cycle path -High effort to minimize arm/effector/moving mass and keep CG low -Modest flexibility with game piece collection -Synergy but not dependence between subsystems e.g. arm and gripper can pickup from HP shelf and score, intake alone can ground-load and scor…

1339: Compression Tests and COTS Pink Arms

1339 Open Alliance Blog 2023

Hi Everybody, Another small update from our prototypes and testing today. Inspired by some of the testing team 3847 has been doing, we wanted to see what kind of compression we can put on the game pieces without popping or permanently damaging them. We built a simple test frame from some 2x4s we had, and drilled holes every inch to adjust compression levels. We used compliant wheels in our testing today, we did not test with more rigid wheels. We found that we were able to compress the pieces a…

1339 Open Alliance Blog 2023

A BRIEF UPDATE We have learned a few things, and rethought a few things. IS THE CONE A 2017 GEAR? No. I was concerned that it would clog loading and scoring areas just by being against the wall, but as Spectrum clearly demonstrated here (and as we discovered as well), it squishes very flat. Right now it feels more like an oddly shaped ball that might require an extra stage to line it up for scoring, but that can use intakes that are fairly standard. CAN A 2022 TELESCOPING CLIMBER BE USED AS …

2713: Pit Overhaul

FRC 2713 - Red Hawk Robotics - 2023 Build Thread

General Requirements Regarding Pit + Shop Improvements: After finishing our competition season, we realized that, in order to actualize our robot-centric goals, we must also make pit and shop improvements. With this in mind, we outlined a few requirements: Moveable Pit: Not only from truck-to-venue-to-truck, but also easily moved during DCMP/CMP playoffs. Additional benefit if NE FIRST keeps CMP pit + robot “shipping service.” Integrated Pit + Shop: Team members becoming accustomed to work…

3467: Archetypes, Robot Designs, and Simulations

Team 3467 2023 Build Blog

[image (3)] [image (4)] [image (5)] Double Jointed Arm Very good at loading game pieces from Double Substation Scores effectively at all levels Very small, so probably good for balancing partners Is it W-8 simple enough to have working for Week 1? Floor intake is terrible, but it’s low priority Walmart Pink Arm (WmPA, the “Gold Arm”) Okay at loading game pieces from double substations Scores effectively at all levels Very small, so probably good for balancing with partners Simpler tha…

Team 3467 2023 Build Blog

REV Arm [image] We decided to use to the REV ION hardware this year because we saw the benefit of using the MAXSpline shaft over a normal piece of hex at the rotation points. A 100: 1 or 125:1, still have to decide, MAXPlanetary drives a 24t sprocket on hex which drives a 48t MAXSpline sprocket fixed to each joint. We repeat this step for the upper joint making it use the same exact hardware. One of the main reasons we decided to use MAXSpline is because of how easily their system was able to…

Team 3467 2023 Build Blog

Week 1 Recap [image] Progress This week we have almost finished the design of the entire robot excluding some small tweaks and optional modifications. We spent a lot of time over the past week prototyping and Saturday we completed the prototype arm. The Arm [image] The Claw [image] For our claw, we have 2 sets of 4in 30A durometer rollers spaced for optimal compression of the cube and the cone. We are running it using a bag motor going into an UltraPlanetary Gearbox. We will be 3D print…

Team 3467 2023 Build Blog

Software Update 1: Reaching Into the Cookie Jar [Cookie Monster GIF by Sesame Street - Find & Share on GIPHY] shoutout @jonahb55 for title/format inspiration One of the primary strengths of the Double Jointed arm is its ability to quickly pick up from the Double Substation - which we’ve affectionately been calling the “Cookie Jar”. Since the arm can sit back into the frame for Cookie Jar intaking, we can slam the bumpers up against the wall for super-quick cycles without worrying that our cla…

3847: Prototypes, Sketches, and Alpha Bot

Spectrum 3847 | Build Blog 2023

Day 5: Idea Refinement, Pincher and Launcher prototype. It’ll be a short one today yesterday! Idea Refinement Today we refined our current design, including working out most of the 2d geometry before moving on to 3d geometry. We will be building an “alpha” robot this weekend to prove our current theories and to be able to rapidly iterate on game-piece manipulator prototypes with the strictness of a robot chassis. It will also allow our controls team to have a robot to test control ideas with. …

Spectrum 3847 | Build Blog 2023

Day 3: Cone Intake, robot sketch, and game manual notes Pinch Roller Cone Intake One of our students devised an elegant solution for a game object mechanism that deals with both balls and cones. The circles are tubes, and it intakes cones from the top. Here is a very early prototype: [image] [image] [image] Elevator + Slider [image] [image] This is one of our favorite sketches of a robot that can reach the top cone-scoring location and do most of the top items on our priority list. T…

4481: Prototypes, Prototypes, and Prototypes

FRC 4481 Team Rembrandts 2023 Build Thread

Update #1 - The Start of Prototyping You know it’s officially the start of build season when there is no longer a quiet moment in the shop. The chop saw, band saw, lathe, hand tools, and power drill sounds are now filling the air. It’s time to get stuff done, make a bunch of mistakes, and learn as much as we can as fast as possible. YouTube Playlist of Prototypes As we make our way through the beginning of the season we will do our best to capture all of our prototypes on video and share them…

Team Rembrandts 4481

6328: Breaking the game, Priority List, and Prototypes

FRC 6328 Mechanical Advantage 2023 Build Thread

Kickoff Day 1 Today for us was pretty much entirely dedicated to understanding the manual and getting a grasp of the strategies we expect to be present. I’m gonna keep it brief because I expect we will have a pretty substantial post coming out tomorrow. Initial Observations: The Golden Corral I’ll start with the main one, that I’ve been surprised hasn’t been getting much coverage on CD until the past lil bit. [pasted image 0] From our understanding, G403 permits teams to carry an unlimite…

FRC 6328 Mechanical Advantage 2023 Build Thread

Kickoff Day 2 On Sunday, we developed our high level strategy, robot priority list, and started working on ideas for prototypes. Like we did last year, we have developed our priority list using the MoSCoW prioritization method. This is a living document that will definitely change, especially in the coming week, as we realize things are harder/easier or more or less valuable than we initially thought. We will come back to this list to help with guiding all of our prototype ideas and design cons…

FRC 6328 Mechanical Advantage 2023 Build Thread

Prototype Progress! Over the past few days we have been hard at work iterating on our intake prototypes. We continued developing our side roller and flange grabber prototypes, as well as explored some new ideas. Side Rollers We assembled our MDF prototype, which turned out to be quite large and hefty, and used a ratchet to mount it to our swerve drive base for testing. Although we were skeptical, the ratchet strap worked surprisingly well for keeping the intake in place. Initially we used a…

7461: Prototypes and Alpha Bot

FRC 7461 Sushi Squad 2023 Build Thread

Preface Today’s meeting was slow again, with some slight attendance issues. Hopefully, we can improve. We were able to get one iteration manipulator and some of our superstructure done. We are still looking to get done by day nine and on track for day 7 with prog time to spare (though of course, unexpected things will happen so who knows). I’m really tired right now, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out geometry, so I won’t write much. I will answer questions tomorrow. Prog post coming s…

FRC 7461 Sushi Squad 2023 Build Thread

Slower meeting today, mostly am doing superstructure manufacturing, and tested a double roller inspired by vex tipping point. Note by changing the speed of the rollers, or having 1 roller faster than the other, you can change the shot/release angle.

FRC 7461 Sushi Squad 2023 Build Thread

[image] [image] Did not finish today :(, prob will finish robot around Thursday with basic autos

[Tyler_Olds]

Week 1 Highlights | Open Alliance | FRC Charged Up 2023 - YouTube Check out some of the highlights from teams in the Open Alliance for week 1 of the FRC Charged Up 2023 season! Produced by members of FRC 6328

OA Teams: Submit your media content to be featured by end of Thursday each week at OA 2023 Link Aggregation This is a great way to really get your team out to the FRC community!

[Connor_H]

Week 2 Highlights

95: Robot Design and Mechanism Binding

FRC 95 The Grasshoppers 2023 Build Thread

Mk1 production released! By a wide margin this is the earliest we have had a robot design hashed out. [image] We are going to be using carbon fiber tubes for the first time on a competition robot in our effort to keep CG and arm inertia low. For now we have chain-drive for the shoulder and virtual 4-bar but may be looking to make those capstan drives in the future for additional weight savings and learning. @JWC_95 will make a post going into some of the shoulder design details once he has a …

FRC 95 The Grasshoppers 2023 Build Thread

@Justin_Foss had an excellent request - what are the different mechanism configurations for doing the stuff? Starting configuration [image] Tipped cone acquisition (looks like I may need to fuss with roller height a little more), rollers counter-spinning [image] Cone handoff, run rollers counter-out to spit out cone [image] Cube scoring [image] Cube ground intake, both rollers spinning in same direction [image] Cube handoff ish, both rollers running to scoot squishy cube out (may have…

FRC 95 The Grasshoppers 2023 Build Thread

@Rufus_t_Doofus, let’s talk about linear mechanism binding! I derived this equation for estimating the likelihood of binding a linear mechanism. [image] A way to reconfigure this free body diagram to be more applicable to this year’s likely mechanism is as a laterally-extending telescope mechanism. It may be the case that a and b change as a mechanism is deployed, so you should use the smallest b and largest a values to be conservative. [image] The conclusions are intuitive: As the eccent…

2158: Prototyping

ausTIN CANs 2158 | 2023 Build Blog

Day 8 Prototyping To start the meeting we started working down the list of improvements to try with the weed wackers. The prototype moved off the dolly and onto a kit bot with bumpers(some old bumpers that didn’t quiet fit but got convinced with a hammer). The first change was increasing the spacing between each axis and longer tread. This didn’t seem to change the dynamic at all which was good. The longer tread is a different style of tread which is significantly “floppier” it still worked bu…

ausTIN CANs 2158 | 2023 Build Blog

Day 11 To start the day we tested the dual over head rollers which are using PVC rollers from our 2020 robot. The PVC rollers didn’t work well, the first roller doesn’t seem to have enough grip to pull the cones in. [|400] We decided to take a small break from our weed wacker prototype to explore using vectored intake wheels. Our team saw open alliance teams having great success with them. If we are able to center the cone reliably with out weed wackers our robot gets simpler and lighter. O…

ausTIN CANs 2158 | 2023 Build Blog

Day 12 Field Build The alliance grid is almost complete. The last three grid pieces are assembled, they need to get bolted together and moved into place. There was good news on the charging station front today, we bent a small aluminum test piece and nothing broke. The charging station build is now full steam ahead again, the poly carbonate parts are being cut on the router. We are still waiting for our metal supplier to source us 1.75″ x 1.75″ aluminum square tube(which is taking surprisingl…

3467: “Alpha” Bot

Team 3467 2023 Build Blog

Week 1 Recap [image] Progress This week we have almost finished the design of the entire robot excluding some small tweaks and optional modifications. We spent a lot of time over the past week prototyping and Saturday we completed the prototype arm. The Arm [image] The Claw [image] For our claw, we have 2 sets of 4in 30A durometer rollers spaced for optimal compression of the cube and the cone. We are running it using a bag motor going into an UltraPlanetary Gearbox. We will be 3D print…

Team 3467 2023 Build Blog

A Placeholder This week is midterms for the team. We met this afternoon for one last “big” push before taking tonight off and entering a stretch of lighter meetings so students can focus on those. I’m putting up a placeholder and our students will follow up with more detailed responses when their schedules allow. VEX Arm Prototype - “Alpha” Robot [TEAM 1] CAD Status - Possible Upgrades?? [arm] Software - Planning the First Moves [Software] No GIF tonight - this more accurately describ…

3847: Alpha Robot and Design Recap

Spectrum 3847 | Build Blog 2023

Day 9: Alpha Elevator Assembly Today we focused on mounting the Elevator onto the Alpha Chasis. A couple of unique things about it are the way we mount the crossbar and A-frame. Here is the concept pioneered by the EngiNERDs in 2022. The tube extends thru the plate providing more strength and keeping the end of the tube open so it’s easy to bolt/nut into and you can remove debris. [image] We also built and rigged the elevator. [image] [image] The ratcheting wrench allows for the elevator t…

Spectrum 3847 | Build Blog 2023

Day 12: Alpha Elevator Explained Our Alpha elevator uses a timing belt and idler pulleys as its motion system. It’s designed around the 0.5” hole spacing on the REV Maxtube and uses the REV Max tube plugs to allow us to bolt the idlers into the rail. The main drive pulley is a 32 HTD 5mm hex pulley with a TheThrifityBot 3D print ½” hex insert in it. The belt for the elevator has to be designed so that each of the vertical run is perfectly vertical, any angle in those runs will cause the belt …

Spectrum 3847 | Build Blog 2023

Day 10 & 11: Design Recap Every Tuesday we hold our design recaps [image] [image] [image] [image] Elevator Test Video [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image]

4099: Prototyping

FRC 4099 The Falcons 2023 Build Blog

PROTOTYPING WOOOOOO U-shaped Gripper: [Ugripper]

Summary

It was a simple design to test the compression and grip of compliant wheels on the game pieces. The two sides of the U were adjustable, allowing us a smaller width to test intaking and outtaking the cone and a larger with to test the cube. After gaining some basic measurements of 35A compliant wheel compression and spacing, we saw that the implementation of this design as a cone intake was questionable due to the way the cone reoriented …

FRC 4099 The Falcons 2023 Build Blog

Prototyping Week 2 In the process of finalizing our mechanisms and subsystems for our robot, our ground intake for cubes proved to give some trouble in terms of the spacing and grippyness of the rollers. Previous iteration of ground intake with thrifty compliant wheels and vectored mecanum wheels [Cube Ground Intake - Plastic 2" Vectored Mecanum Wheels]

Assesment of Problem^^^

After iterating from our previous 3-roller design, we tried moving to a two-roller design: the bottom rol…

4481: Prototyping and Game Analysis

FRC 4481 Team Rembrandts 2023 Build Thread

Update #2 - More Prototyping, Yes More If you’ve been following along, you know we’ve spent all of week one working on prototyping while our 3DM (Data Driven Decision Making) team has focused on analysis. To close out the week, here is a recap/spotlight on some of our prototypes. YouTube Playlist of Prototypes Remember we post all of our videos directly to our YouTube playlist for the Build Season 2023 - Robot Development. We hope you continue to enjoy, and in the world of YouTube… we hope yo…

FRC 4481 Team Rembrandts 2023 Build Thread

You spin me right 'round, baby. Right 'round like a record, baby Spindexer As the team was working over the past week, we discussed many times how a robot from last year could play this year’s game scoring low and likely mid with a shooter for cubes. This discussion led to rewatching reveal videos from 2020-2022, which lead to the idea… What if we could use a spindexer… for CONES? So the team set to work, and here are the results: First concept [FRC4481 - 2023 Prototypes - Spindexer…

FRC 4481 Team Rembrandts 2023 Build Thread

Game Analysis Having a successful season requires building a strong robot. Building a strong robot requires a strong strategy. Having a strong strategy requires a high level understanding of the game. This year’s game, FIRST Charge up presented by Haas poses a new challenge to teams once again. This analysis is a follow up to the game analysis we already started in our Kickoff / Reaction Post. We’ve started analysis on several different things, chief among them: Where do we want to score? and …

4795: Robot Design

4795 Eastbots - 2023 Build Thread

Week 2 - Wednesday 1/18 Update Design Process Update So we’ve been hard at work designing, reviewing, and making mistakes this week. First, we got our shoulder mechanism all design reviewed, and like @andreab said, we’ve designed an “alpha” end effector of sorts so we can learn from on robot data. After the design review, one of our mentors @akiyengar brought up a point none of us had been considering… load ratings. Calcs were done for gear reduction and moment of inertia but ironically none …

6328: Auger Cone Pickup

FRC 6328 Mechanical Advantage 2023 Build Thread

Quick Updates! Side Roller + Arm To further test our side roller prototype we designed a single-jointed arm that attaches to our swerve drivebase on which we can mount our intake. This will allow us to test scoring on the hybrid and mid nodes, start with software automation, and begin driver practice. The arm is currently being built, so we will be sure to showcase it along with a longer writeup soon. [image][image] Flange Grabber/Auger With a few changes, here are some videos of the c…

FRC 6328 Mechanical Advantage 2023 Build Thread

Updated Auger Write-Up As seen in the videos from the previous post, we made some significant updates to the flange grabber/auger prototype. After countless iterations of finding the optimal compression and exploring roller options, the prototype has gained some very effective improvements. After the unsuccessful 0.4” compression version, we had low hopes for this intake going forward. But, after trying the 0.7” compression and new auger design, we were very pleased to see it work quite well. W…

6838: Diagonal Elevator and Slider

X-SHARC #6838 | Build Blog 2023

Hi! This weekend was very efficient for us. The CAD team pulled an all-nighter at Nitrocare’s office, a generous sponsor of ours. While the ultimate goal was to finish the robot assembly without the intake, we could not finish the whole thing. However, we got a lot done! Most parts are already sent out to our manufacturing sponsors. We hope to get them by Wednesday. [Cadding at Nitrocare] [CAD] Robot Progress Elevator Hands of to Mohamad, our elevator lead! He did a fantastic job on this. …

X-SHARC #6838 | Build Blog 2023

Slider Update Since yesterday, we got our slider design up to a point where it is ready to be manufactured. Although this is intended to be the final version, there might be a couple of revisions based on its testing. I will let the photos speak for themselves: [Slider Extended 1] [Slider Extended 2] [Slider Extended Top Down] [Slider Collapsed Isometric] [Slider Collapsed Top Down] [Slider Collapsed Side View] Technical Details: The design uses our old 30mm wide HTD5 belts from …

7461: Alpha Robot

FRC 7461 Sushi Squad 2023 Build Thread

[image] [image] On technicality we are on schedule. Holiday today so only 8 ppl came, still good work though.

7492: Vacuum Testing

7492 CavBots - 2023 Build Blog

Now I gotta say these OA posts are definitely hectic, because my team continues to change directions for our design. However, I do believe that this post encompasses our FINAL concept! The Field: [chopChop] [PVCMeasure] [construction] [gridDone] We decided that we will be building the WHOLE field rather than just half, this way our team and 1477 can practice auton routines for both alliances (since the field isn’t symmetrical). On Saturday, we built both of the grids and will get to bu…

[Tyler_Olds]

Open Alliance Week 2 Highlights | 2023 Charged Up - YouTube Check out the week 2 highlights of over a dozen Open Alliance teams created by 6328!

[Connor_H]

Week 3 Highlights

95: Gripper and Good OA Content

FRC 95 The Grasshoppers 2023 Build Thread

ok nerds imma talk about gripper now using only one air cylinder to reduce mass creates too much floppiness. Not good. In order to control the chaotic motion of the pinchers, nylon components were added to limit the motion of each side of the mechanism and prevent any metal-on-metal nastiness. A benefit of limits is that the gripper automatically centers when fully opened or fully closed [gripper limits] the concave geometry is designed to maximize surface area on both game pieces whilst s…

FRC 95 The Grasshoppers 2023 Build Thread

Let’s talk about how to make good OA content. I have been writing open build threads since 2014 and sharing open content before that. I’ve developed my own style over the years and have opinions about what works and what does not work for OA/build thread content. I think it would be useful to share some of my thoughts as the OA sees explosive growth. OA posting is technical writing. Sure, the environment is much less formal than academia, but the same basic rules of technical writing apply. …

1757: Code Update

FRC 1757 Wolverines 2022-2023 Build Thread

Programming? Programming. Abstract Since we’re going with a 3 linkage arm, a lot will go into the control of the arm to make it smooth and behave responsibly. Furthermore, autonomous is always a very important aspect of the game, and path planning will be crucial to achieve a reliable autonomous. As a python team, we have ease of writing code yet lower general support in the larger FIRST community, so skilled programmers who can translate between java examples and interpret them into python ar…

2713: Robot Design and Code

FRC 2713 - Red Hawk Robotics - 2023 Build Thread

An Update We’ve been slacking, and we apologize. We’re a rapidly changing team that is currently maxing out our bandwidth on the robot. Design Drivetrain We settled on swerve rather quickly, on day 2 of build. We looked at the field and the only reason that we shouldn’t do swerve that we could find was the cable protector, which we don’t believe will be detrimental to it. Additionally with how cramped the line-up process is in the community, on top of the cramping in the human player station…

3749: Fully Assembled Robot

FRC 3749 Team Optix | 2023 Charged Up OA Build Season Thread

Team Optix Build Recap (Week 1 & 2) Week 1 Our Build Department was split into a couple different teams. For the robot itself, there are 2 main groups: arm and claw. Our swerve drivetrain was completed very early in week 1, so the main focus is designing the two subsystems. By the end of the week, early prototypes and a few different CADs were completed. [image] Claw Using our in-house laser cutter, the claw group began prototyping a couple different designs to hold both the cone and the cu…

3847: Intake Testing

Spectrum 3847 | Build Blog 2023

Day 19: Elevator Rails and intake testing Intake Testing We had some of our best intake tests today. One of the key points in an interactive design cycle is when you begin to understand what can be removed not just what can be added to allow the system to keep working but to make it simpler and more robust. Yesterday Alpha’s intake had 3” compliant wheels on the top roller and launcher. Today we swapped those for 2” polycarb and silicone rubber (these are the hood rollers from our 2022 practi…

Spectrum 3847 | Build Blog 2023

Day 15 & 16 Cone Intake Testing We are pretty happy with the test version of the cone intake. It’s able to pick up tipped-over cones that have their tip ahead of the flange and the flange within the width of the intake. When at the right height it can pick up standing-up cones as well. There are more failed attempts on in our photo gallery. [image] [image] [image] [image] Cube Intake Testing We don’t have the internal structure fully developed so the cube doesn’t like staying in but wh…

5987: Double Jointed Arm and Prototypes

5987 Galaxia 2023 Build Thread

We’ve been continuing to work on our prototypes, as our deadline to have everything finalized draws closer. Based on the results of our prototyping, we’ve decided on the general form of the robot. The chassis will be a swerve drive, with a ground intake that hands off to a pneumatic gripper, which is moved by a two-joint arm. Once the final prototypes are completed today, we’ll sketch out a “blockbot” which defines the space requirements and connections for each mechanism. Ground Intake: Cones…

6328: Code Update

FRC 6328 Mechanical Advantage 2023 Build Thread

Software Update #2: Finding the North Star Let’s talk about AprilTags. We gained a lot of valuable experience last year with full field localization using reflective tape (more info here), and we’re very excited about the opportunities that AprilTags provide with superior precision, robustness, and ease of use. I also want to note before getting into the details that the code for this project is not designed to be “plug and play” in the same way as many of our recent projects. See the importa…

7407: Climbing Forks and Pivoting Elevator

7407 (The Wired Boars) Open Alliance Build Thread 2023

Thrifybot Elevator Kit Transformation Hello! As some of you may know, we at 7407 are planning to build a robot that has 3 DOF “arm” with a pivoting shoulder, a linear elevator, and a rotary wrist. And wow, would you look at that: there’s a picture of our robot design attached below. One of the main reasons we were able to crank out our CAD assembly so quickly (besides feeding CAD students nothing but energy drinks for the past two weeks), was thanks to our decision to purchase the Thriftybot El…

7407 (The Wired Boars) Open Alliance Build Thread 2023

7407 Wired Boars Buddy Climb and Intakes | The Open Alliance Show | 2023 Charged Up - YouTube 7407 Wired Boars have an awesome design to utilize carbon fiber forks for a buddy climb off the side of the charging station. Hear about the details along with a full CAD overview and intake prototypes. [FB_IMG_1674675266798]

[Tyler_Olds]

Open Alliance Week 3 Highlights | FRC Charged Up - YouTube Check out the week 3 highlights created by 6328 featuring many Open Alliance teams as they continue to make awesome progress. Features include completed superstructures, intakes, arms, vision and more!

[Connor_H]

Week 4 Highlights

95: Intake Testing

FRC 95 The Grasshoppers 2023 Build Thread

So, uh, turns out you can heat-stake 3D prints with Rivnuts pretty okay… [image] [image] For a magical main breaker protector. [image] Model here, compliments of 2220. Some intake testing videos! Just playing around and trying some different things here [FRC 95 The Grasshoppers Intake Testing 1] Cone-only intake mode [FRC 95 The Grasshoppers 2023 Intake Testing C] Cone-only then cube-only intake modes [FRC 95 The Grasshoppers 2023 Intake Testing 2] S…

3161: Arm Sim

Tronic Titans 3161 Build Thread | Open Alliance 2023

Post 8 - Week 3 Update Hello everyone! Finalizing the details of our prototypes and beginning to produce some advancements. Due to exams and a snowstorm, this week was a bit less productive than the other but still valid nonetheless. Detailed below is our third week of build season, as well as a quick summary. We will update our blog next week with our week 4 progress, so make sure to check our thread soon Week Three In Short: “Final” Design - picking a definitive intake architecture and R…

3467: Slop

Team 3467 2023 Build Blog

Let’s talk about Slop We built our arm joints with a goal of making it as rigid as possible. We used sprockets bolted through the arm, through MAXspline plates, and through shaft collars on Rev MAXSpline as a live shaft rotating about ¾” tube deadaxle with tube nuts for our shoulder joint. [image] Despite a lot of effort put into the joints, we still have a bit of slop in the arm. Where is it coming from? The running theory from testing is that most of our slop is coming from the chains, an…

3847: Design Recap

Spectrum 3847 | Build Blog 2023

Day 25: Design Recap [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image]

4099: Design Recap

FRC 4099 The Falcons 2023 Build Blog

Robot Design Update Woohoo it’s CAD!! Design members have been hard at work and finished up CADing and reviewing the robot. Bar some prototyping for the Gripper which may change some distances, we now have a good idea of what our robot for this year will look like! [image] [image] We ultimately decided to split our robot into four different subsystems: Drivetrain, Ground Intake, Lift, and Gripper. Overviews and design decisions for each subsystem can be found below Drivet…

4481: Prototypes and Robot Design

FRC 4481 Team Rembrandts 2023 Build Thread

Week 3 Recap, It’s Week 4 Already?! Wow, we are officially three weeks deep into the 2023 build season, where has the time gone. Through much blood, sweat, and a few tears we have down selected an initial design and put our heads together in SOLIDWORKS to turn ideas into CAD. If you’ve been following along on our YouTube channel and even more specifically the Build Season 2023 Playlist you know that we have been trying just about everything, from our own ideas to trying to replicate concepts fr…

4795: Arm Counterbalancing

4795 Eastbots - 2023 Build Thread

Mini Update - Counterbalance! A real update is coming Wednesday, but we got the arm counterbalance on today so I wanted to share some pics and videos of that working! [image] The drum springs go on this big roller and bolt to an aluminum plate. Dyneema rope ties into this plate and runs up to the shoulder, where it ties onto a protruding hole at a specific radius. This allows the spring torque component to always equal the gravitational torque component, cause they’re always proportional to t…

6328: Robot Design and Scouting System

FRC 6328 Mechanical Advantage 2023 Build Thread

Cad Update: CAD progress has gotten back on track for the most part. The arm and cube intake are almost finalized and the end-manipulator and cone intake are nearing completion. Packaging and integration of all of the subsystems has continued to be our biggest challenge with the small frame perimeter and our desire to pass the arm through itself. Many changes have been related to motor mounting, strengthening the joints, and accounting for out of stock parts. [image][image][image] The additi…

FRC 6328 Mechanical Advantage 2023 Build Thread

The 6328 Scouting Experience: System Overview We have been using a custom scouting system since 2019 to collect and analyze data at events, and it has been an integral part of our success, especially this past season. We use a custom app, which we run on Kindle Fire HD tablets to collect data and upload to a laptop over bluetooth. This data gets stored in a SQLite database. We then do post processing with an Alteryx workflow to sanitize our data. Finally, we use Tableau and Google Sheets to vi…

7461: Robot Design

FRC 7461 Sushi Squad 2023 Build Thread

Apologies for the lack of posts. Currently working on an arm write-up and have been a bit busy. Weekly Recap (ish): We finally figured out most of the automation for our mechanism, and we’re now scoring! There are still some kinks we need to iron out, but we are starting to transition to drive practice now! Beta Cad Beta cad isn’t completely done, but its close enough that I can talk about it. Main changes: Added a cone ramp “Chute Door” for…

8177: Design Review

Vector 8177 Build Thread | Open Alliance 2023

Design Review Look! It’s a completed robot! (in CAD… mostly… it’s mostly completed…) We talked a little about our design choices in our previous posts, but we never really went in depth with our entire robot. So with our CAD mostly finished, let’s take a deeper look at what our bot will look like this year. [image] [|347.7529411764706x264.253888457148] Our bot for this year is themed around two core ideas: simplicity and strength. In other words, we wanted a bot that was mod…

[Tyler_Olds]

Open Alliance Week 4 Highlights - Charged Up - YouTube Open Alliance Week 4 Updates video is out from shooting to spindexers and more!

[Connor_H]

Week 5 Highlights

95: Practice Footage and Greasing

FRC 95 The Grasshoppers 2023 Build Thread

Here is some unedited intake practice footage. [FRC 95 The Grasshoppers 2023 Intake Practice] We tried a new intake geometry for about a second, then ripped it all back apart to the MK1 collector design. The rollers were too close and too rigid to intake cones via their flange. [image] ‘Hey, you guys know we have a nice cart you can work on, right?’ ‘We like the floor’ [image] And also an intake smash test. The linear slide and drive are super compliant, the operator has to dr…

FRC 95 The Grasshoppers 2023 Build Thread

Let’s talk about grease. As we are all learning about the maintenance of our newly built robots I think it is useful to re-post info from our 2022 build thread that has low-key been a huge quality of life improvement for us and others. I’ll just give the tl;dr here: Buy a syringes and large-gauge needles. Pack one with Mobil EP1 for external gears (swerve module, drivetrain, and similar. Pack another with Mobil XHP-461 for planetary gearboxes and enclosed gears. Both greases can also be used …

2611: Simultaneous balancing

Team 2611 Jacktown Vectors 2023 Open Alliance Build Thread

Request for all non omnidirectional teams. Please practice driving up into the charge station and turning 90 degrees. It makes balancing so much easier if one robot does not move. Here is a video of not turning 90. [Team 2611 testing out auto balance with another robot] And here is a video of the first robot turned 90. Team 2611 Auto balance with another KOP turned 90 - YouTube Here’s another combination we came up with today! [PXL_20230211_165425275]

3161: Aluminum Swirl, FEA, and General Progress

Tronic Titans 3161 Build Thread | Open Alliance 2023

Post 11 - Aluminum Swirl Pattern Tutorial Hello Everyone! This is just a quick post to highlight our most first video tutorial which shows teams how to put a very simple – yet very attractive swirl pattern on box tubing. If you have any questions about the process please let us know, we are happy to help! [How to Create Cool Swirl Patterns on Aluminum! | Team 3161] Also stay tuned for our week 5 recap! Will be coming out very shortly!

Tronic Titans 3161 Build Thread | Open Alliance 2023

Post 12 - Week 5 Update Hello Everyone! Week 5 was a very productive week for Team 3161, with production and manufacturing moving ahead with a fast pace. We got our parts that were sent to Sable back and began cleaning and preparing for assembly. Lots of fast paced action finally reaching the shop. Detailed below is our fifth week of build season, as well as a quick summary. We will update our log next week with our week 6 progress, so make sure to check our thread soon! Week Five In Short: …

3506: Swerve + Charge Station

FRC 3506 YETI Robotics - 2023 Build Thread

After a lot of work this week, we’re almost done assembling our robot! First things first: we found out part way through our meeting on Saturday that we’d been building our robot backward. Whoops! For a bit more detail, the lower elevator supports were supposed to be mounted 4” from the front of the robot, and the upper elevator supports were supposed to be mounted 8” from the back of the robot - we had it the other way around. Our first sign that something was wrong was finding the arm hit th…

3847: Design Recap and On-The-Fly Generation

Spectrum 3847 | Build Blog 2023

Day 32: Design Recap [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] Week 4 Gallery Week 5 Gallery

3926: Jumping The Charge Station

Team 3926 MPAror Robotics 2023 Open Alliance Thread

One of the strategies we set after kickoff was that, as a non-swerve team this year, we wanted to be able to differentiate ourselves from a swerve drive by being able to cycle over the charging station without losing time. Now, I present a robot traveling almost full speed (20ish ft/s) with 8 in pneumatic wheels driven into a Charge Station: [ChargeStationJump] Suffice to say I think cycling over it will be fun.

4795: Landing Gear and New Intake

4795 Eastbots - 2023 Build Thread

Wednesday 2/8 Update Hello everyone! We have arrived in our testing testing testing and iteration phase of the year. Here are some updates from our last two meetings: Design: Improved everybot style intake! Wristed, designed to be easy to swap into existing arm geometry Adjusted belt and pulley sizes to make less janky and avoid using zip tie tensioners [image] Landing Gear(Onshape) Allows us to overhang more to take up even less space on the charge station Allows us to have more contro…

5414: Robot Overview

FRC 5414 Pearadox 2023 Build Thread

Pit Design We worked on the Pit Design this week. The main idea was based off of the game theme, energy and how it moves around. One of the students suggested that we could have a battery that could “charge” up our pit. That idea was elaborated on and we decided to have our mascot Peary, charge up the battery. Yet the other side of the pit was not developed. We experimented on multiple of ideas which led to a team vote over what idea was most liked, and it was an idea with different wires charg…

6328: Double Jointed Arm Programming

FRC 6328 Mechanical Advantage 2023 Build Thread

Software Update #3: Flailing With Precision That double jointed arm looks pretty fancy . I guess we’ll need some code or something to control it. /s We’ve been working on controls for the arm for a couple of weeks. As the second most important subsystem on the robot (the drivetrain is sort of critical), we want to make sure to get the arm controls as fast and reliable as possible before needing to test on the real hardware. To review, our arm has four components to manage: A sta…

8177: Vector Jig 2.0

Vector 8177 Build Thread | Open Alliance 2023

So the Vector Jig may be illegal, but we’re not done yet… Presenting the Vector Jig V2.0: Hand Edition! [Vector Jig V2.0: Hand Edition | FRC 2023] After doing some relatively simple math, we deduced that marking a line 5.4 inches from the tip of your human player’s middle finger and another line 2.5 inches beyond the first (so 7.9” from the middle finger), we can have a completely legal (we hope) and still usable Vector Jig! [IMG_2034 (1)] We did deduce that using a marker is …

[Tyler_Olds]

Charged Up Week 5 Highlights | Open Alliance - YouTube Check out the week 5 highlights video from Open Alliance teams including shooting cones and cubes, vision, CAD, hanging off of the charging station and more!