Titanium Rams 5959 | Build Thread 2025 | Open Alliance

[denis5959]

Welcome to the Titanium Rams 5959 Build Thread for 2025 Season!

Hello Chief Delphi! This is our first year posting a build thread blog, and we could not be more excited! This season is very important for us, because it has been marked by a lot of changes, and we are happy to share them with the community.
We’ll aim to post updates regularly throughout the season, but first, let us introduce ourselves.

About Us

Titanium Rams is a FIRST Robotics Competition team established in 2016 through the initiative of passionate students in collaboration with PrepaTec. Based in Tampico, Mexico, our mission is to represent our city, spread science and technology in the region, and impact people with the values of FIRST.

Our Resources

• Github
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Tiktok
• The Blue Alliance

We’re excited to engage with the community this season! Whether you have questions about our build process or want to share your thoughts, feel free to reach out. We’d love to hear from you!

Here are some of our improvements that we have made for this season :

New Chassis
Since Infinite Recharge, our team has used a Mecanum Chassis, which has been really useful along the years. It allowed us to use Field Oriented Drive, and overall have a better performance on the field.

Here is Jäger, our robot for the Rapid React season, and Chimuelo (“Toothless”), our robot for the Crescendo season.

However it wasn´t until Charged Up when our team decided it was a must to have a swerve chassis, so through founding, sponsors and sales, we were able to buy four MK4i Swerve Modules, with NEO motors for both Rotation and Translation, Magnetic Cancoders, and Colson Wheels. These modules arrived mid-Crescendo season, so we’re officially using them for the first time in Reefscape.

Here are our four modules fresh out of the packet.
One of our first encounters was deciding on what size we wanted our robot frame perimeter to be. Initially, we planned on doing a 28" x 28" frame perimeter, but later on, we resized it to 29" x 29" to accommodate a horizontally positioned battery and enhance stability for potential elevator mechanisms.

New Control System
We have always used CTRE control system, and we never had any issues with it, but this season, we adopted the REV PDH for its practicality and updated features.

Before ^

After^ (we still need to arrange our wiring)

Swerve testing

Shoutout and thanks to team Cyberius 6017 for their help and suggestions in our design process

New Shirts!
Our seasonal shirts are here! This time, we incorporated elements of molten metal and an e-sports aesthetic while maintaining our signature red/wine and black theme. It is also the first time that our shirts have dry-fit material.

Consolidated a FTC team!
Our FTC team, 23656, bridges the gap between newcomers and FRC by providing a less intimidating introduction to robotics. It allows students to explore and decide whether to pursue FRC after gaining experience in FTC.

Our first FTC generation participated in the FIRST in Show season without any mentor guidance, and today, they are the members that mentor the current FIRST Dive students, fostering a cycle of learning and leadership within our program.

Our Kickoff!
We watched the kickoff through discord since our school did not allowed us to go in-person. It was an exciting watchparty, and soon after the game animation was revealed, we started reading the manual, so that in Monday when we are allowed to go, we can fully understand the game, and propose ideas for further designs.

Our first thoughts(on the Saturday watchparty) were that it seemed quite interesting, with a wide diversity of what each team will focus on.

We’ll keep you updated as we develop ideas and prototypes!

[denis5959]

Week One

Unboxing our Gamepieces

Our coach attended the Monterrey kickoff hosted by team Overture 7421 to recieve our Season Kit. To be honest we underestimated the size of the Game Pieces, as they are easily the biggest game pieces we have ever worked with.

Analysis of the Game

First, we listed all the important measurements to keep them in plain sight.
Although it might seem tedious at first, having the measurements in plain sight helped us from constantly checking the manual over and over again. Additionally, constantly seeing the measurements made us subconsciously familiar with them, which will be a great advantage when designing our robot and at the competition.

Which robots are we going to take inspiration from?
After analyzing some of the robots made in three days, our favorite ones were: Rusthounds, Unqualified Quokkas, and Penn State.
The Penn State robot has a huge Wow Factor, and what we liked the most about it was its donut climb. However, since we have already designed our belly pan for our 29"X29" swerve chassis and we are competing at a week one regional, making another one with a climb/hole in the middle, and rearranging our electronic components would potentially take away about a week of our build season.
The Rusthounds robot was our favorite of them all since its design somewhat resembles our Charged up robot Rampage.

Here are some Cube Cycles in action:

Rampage Cycles

The idea of having an elevator and a pivot as a mechanism is going to be really helpful this season. What we liked about the rusthounds robot is that it receives corals from the opposite side that it delivers them, making faster cycles as a result.
Another thing to take into consideration is their implementation into xRC.
xRC helped us get familiar with the game, its mechanics, and the rules. For instance, we did not know if it was possible to score in your opponents Processor, and through this simulator, we found out that it was.

Yesterday, the Rusthounds robot was added to the simulator, which means if we decide to take inspiration from their design, we could practice on the field even when we’re not in the workshop.

After doing some sketching, and if everyting goes according to plan, our robot should look something like this:

A robot capable of picking up algae from the floor, an elevator mechanism, and if possible, capable of deep climbing.

Updating our Softwares
After analyzing the game, we began updating our libraries, re-imaging our RoboRIO, configuring the new radio, and updating our REV components, which we struggled a little bit with. Along the way, we discovered the following:

• Spark Max firmware version 25.0.0 has a bug that can cause the CAN network to fail or deactivate. To fix this issue, you must update each device individually to version 25.0.1 via USB.
• The PDH experiences issues when trying to update to version 25 in normal mode. To resolve this, follow these steps:

1. Power off the PDH
2. Press and hold the “Mode” button, then connect the USB-C cable while keeping the button pressed.
3. Update the REV Hardware Client to version 1.7.
4. Install the PDH firmware in USB Recovery Mode.

Today we will have our first formal team meeting. I will keep you updated on how it goes : )