Flywheel Fun

Hey team! The third design being implemented onto this years robot is our flywheel intake. We will be using this to suck in the box from the ground and bring it into a position where the H.U.G. can get a hold of it.
For any of you who dont know what a flywheel is its a rubber wheel, usually paired with another, that spin at a set speed in order to grip and pull in what ever comes between them.
This intake will be placed on the front of the robot to maximize accessibility. The group of members working on it are making great progress and are ready for a full prototype.I personally cant wait to see it up and running.

The H.U.G.

Hey team! The second design being used on our 2018 robot is the H.U.G. system which has been our most modified since Saturday. It began as a simple inner-tube ready to be pumped up by a bike pump to close around the box, but with the ideas and work from a few of our members they have made it into a pneumatic powered clamp that compresses from both sides while only having to use one piston. 

They are currently working on finishing the CAD for this latest version and will be ready to  get a full sized prototype out soon.

The Derp-Arm Design

Hey team! Our week 2 has been quite productive. On this Saturday we were able to decide on the key parts tat we would be using in our over all robot this year. The first one is the "Derp-Arm" this is a crane like are on a pivot. The longer half, used to lift the box to the desired height, will be made of a panto-graph while the shorter section on the other side of the pivot will be made to have adjustable weight to counter balance the load of the box.
It is currently being tested to see if the spacing and weight distribution will be correct. We hope to get a full scale prototype out in the coming days.
  

Week 1 is Done

Hey team, as our first full week of build season is coming to an end we can see we have made some good progress. By today we have had proof-of-concepts of every idea either made in the shop or CAD'ed in our Onshape file. Looking through I'm seeing a lot of good ideas and tomorrow we plan to start hashing out which ones to continue working on in the future weeks while our parents have their meeting with Mrs. McKim. So what comes next you ask? We will be starting to choose the designs to follow and make fully functioning prototypes, but we wont know those until our Saturday meeting tomorrow.

In the mean time get some rest and we will see everyone bright and early tomorrow

Getting to prototype

Hey team! we are making good progress on our Proof-of Concepts and some are even getting to the stages beyond that such at the dimensioned drawing or the prototyping. Compared to last year we are ahead of schedule, but we need to keep this pace and can't start slowing down now. We are gonna do amazing at competitions this year, but in order for that to happen the whole team needs to stay on task and not get lazy. I know that we can do it so lets get our tools and get to it!

Happy prototyping 

Proof of Concepts

Hey team! Today we had another day to get designs out. We had few groups even finish with well constructed proofs of concept to show how their design can work out in the real world. They were quite rudimentary and that is perfectly fine when it comes to proof of concepts. So we hope that we can get the rest of the proofs of concepts out pretty soon so that people can see similar ideas and start working to dimension and prototype them together.
And for all of us working on Onshape to CAD the designs be sure to work in the "2018 Robot" folder that Mr. E shared to us so that everyone can see your work.

Happy building 

Six-Wheel Omni Drive

Hey Team, we have ordered the components for a six-wheel Omni drive system for our 2018 robot. It will be constructed to test by January 20th (Saturday). We are also working to order all the parts to make a second version so we can compare different gear ratios. Once we get those components the team will need to construct with the base that we are preparing in the mean time.

Hey Team! Build season has officially began! so that means we need designs. Get on Onshape or get someone who can and get your ideas for our 2018 challenge out so the whole team an see.

Happy Designing!

A fast base for FIRST Power Up!

We are so excited to have shared our holonomic drive code with the FIRST community this year, and are looking forward to potentially using it for the FIRST PowerUp competition. For our strategy, speed will be very important this year so I want to try out the code with a six wheel omni drive. I've started to design a base for the robot using miniCIMs and 6" omni wheels, but I have tried to leave room for 8" wheels, if we feel that they would be a better choice.  I got the drive motors placed and I think I am ready for us to build a prototype base to outfit with the wheels and necessary components so we can hand it over to our programmers for a run through. This is just my idea, nothings final yet. Feel free to share your ideas and make any suggestions you may have.

-Rocky

FIRST PowerUp Day 1!

Kick-Off has come! The FIRST PowerUp Challenge is here! We started this morning with a big team potluck breakfast and lots of our mentors attending too. We are very excited about this year's challenge. We assigned people to groups to research all the rules of the game including penalties, robot restrictions, field set up, game rules, and match play. Once each group was confident in their knowledge of whichever topic they were assigned, they presented their detailed summaries to the everyone else. After everyone had a good understanding of everything we broke off into new groups and began discussing strategy. That lasted quite a long time. However, after a lot of debate, we have decided that our priorities for designing our robot will be the scale and climbing. This week is focused on prototyping proofs of concept. Our goal is to have a good idea of the preliminary design by the end of the day on Saturday so that we can spend the following week dialing the design in based on performance, constraints, weight distribution, materials selection, etc.  This is so exciting!

Remember, we are meeting every day after school, so if you are able to join us, we will be happy to have you there!  See you soon!

-Rocky