X-SHARC #6838 | 2023 Off-Season Build Blog

[MohamadKasem]

Hello! I am Mohamad, one of the X-SHARC leads for this year. I will be helping with updating the blog throughout the year.

A Little About Us

We are a school-based team in Istanbul, Turkey. We have been participating in FRC since 2017, and have had quite some success here in Turkey through the last two years.

If you’d like to know more about us, here are some of our team links!

Team Links

• X-SHARC #6838 · GitHub
• YouTube
• Instagram
• Linkedin

CAD

For this off-season, our main goal was to make an optimized version of last year’s robot. When designing this robot we tried to build on the robot’s weaknesses from last year and took inspiration from team 973 while doing so.

Elevator

• We have tried to make our elevator as compact as possible for this year, by doing so we have more space for the electrical components on both sides of the belly pan, and generally more freedom to work on the robot as we like.

• One of our main weaknesses last year was the lack of accessibility to our gearbox, by having a slanted gearbox(973 inspired), the gearbox will be more accessible from the back since there won’t be any Swerve mechanism interference when working on the output shaft, and the chain.

• Since we decided to go with a wider intake this time, we had to make our supports slanted so they wouldn’t interfere with the intake.

• We’ve also decided to change our rope tensioning system, so we won’t have to tension it every couple of matches.

Chassis

• After going through a good 9 events(2 years) with our MK3 swerve modules, we have finally changed them to the MK4i models for the offseason.

• Identical to last year we have gone with a 65cm x 65cm chassis for this year as well.

Carriage

• We weren’t really satisfied with the performance of the carriage on last year’s robot, we frequently had problems with the belts used to move the intake pivot, so this time we’ve switched to chains as they’ll be more durable and reliable.

Intake

• For this robot we have decided to go with a 973-inspired intake, as we believe it’ll perform better when intaking cubes compared to our previous intake due to the placement of the second shaft at the bottom.

• Similar to last year we’re also using a two-sided belt as it provides simplicity, and weight reduction.

Mechanical Progress

We have had a few opportunities to work on the robot up until now. Everything has been going quite smoothly here’s our progress:

• Thanks to our generous manufacturers!

• We’ve finished the chassis

• We’ve finished the base stage and gearbox of our elevator.

• We mounted the elevator on the chassis and then mounted the supports.

• We’ve partially started with our carriage as we’re still waiting on some pieces.

We’ll try to continuously update you on our progress. Please don’t hesitate to provide any suggestions or ask questions.

[RisenFalcon]

oh wow, design convergence

Are you expecting to see any issues from the slots cut into the bottom and top of your carriage plates? We made a similar cut in our CAD and had some concerns when we FEAd the assembly.

[keremkarakas]

@MohamadKasem

• We’ve finished the chassis

I’m glad to see you finally transitioning from the trusty MK3 to the MK4i modules. I really like the concept of your robot. Have fun and best of luck with your endeavors!

[MohamadKasem]

No, we aren’t expecting any problems, we did the same thing last year to our carriage plates and didn’t experience any issues.

[berraeylultoprak]

Progress Update

Hello everyone! My name is Berra, and I’m the co-captain of X-SHARC. I will be sharing our recent progress for the past weeks in this update! We apologize for the long delay.

We are happy to say that we’ve achieved a milestone in our robot’s progress, with the mechanical build now almost complete except for a few adjustments. Tomorrow, we will be starting on the electronics, and we expect it all to be finalized very soon.

In recent weeks, we’ve made certain advancements, particularly with the integration of our new intake plates. This allowed us to complete the intake assembly, resulting in the final version:

Following this, we shifted to assembling the carriage and intake, where we encountered and addressed some minor alignment issues. Here is the robot’s current appearance from different angles:

Looking ahead, we anticipate the completion of the elevator assembly, with the elevator’s rope system being the finishing touch in our mechanical build. Once both the mechanical and electronic aspects are fully done, we’ll shift our attention to programming, where we’ve made significant progress already, and only require a few modifications. The new MK4i swerve modules, to exemplify, which we’ve also included in the previous update, are an adjustment for this season in programming. With only a few adjustments to make, though, we will hopefully be able to explore new autonomous alternatives, and spend more time on tuning.

We will make sure to update throughout every step of the process, see you!
openalliance