Spectrum 3847 Blog

World Championship - Curie Division Event Recap

2024-05-15T19:57:00.003-05:00

Results:

Excellence in Engineering Award

We ranked 4th, was the 1st pick of the 1st alliance, and were eliminated in our third playoff match. We ended up with a 9-4-0 record. Thank you to our alliance partners 2200 MMRambotics, 2137 The Oxford RoboCats, and 503 Frog Force!

For the first time in our team’s history, we were awarded the Excellence in Engineering Award, completing our robot award hexfecta. We are extremely grateful to be recognized with this award at the Worlds level.

Failures and Fixes

Failure: The bottom intake roller was somehow missing one of its bolts during our first match. Oops. We managed to play normally until around 0:40 left, when a defender pushed us up onto the roller and stayed there so we couldn’t move until they moved away.

Fix: longer bolts and ensure they are tight between each match (loctite isn’t an option because of polycarb)

Failure: Intake stopped spinning during our practice match because debris and carpet got tangled in it in the form of a gray and orange hair ball.

Fix: check for that before every match.

Failure: The competition fields used Batch 2 notes, which are significantly harder than Batch 1 or 3 notes. At some point, our Batch 1 notes started getting stuck in our intake during system checks. It would feed correctly if intake was pressed again. We never noticed the issue during matches.

Fix: Replaced lower frame tube.

Failure: Max planetary output stage shattered during system check.

Fix: Replaced the output stage

Failure: After receiving some double defense late in the event, our indexer plate cracked, allowing the indexer motor to wiggle and slowing one or two of our feed launches.

Fix: Zip tied everything together. It worked. In the future we’ll need to replace the plate.

Controls

There is too much to cover when it comes to autonomous, so it will get its own dedicated post later.

During our last match we had a false positive on our LaserCAN during our trap sequence. This caused the robot to believe we had a note in the amp-trap mechanism and we climbed.

End of season

EPA rank: 22nd Worldwide, 2nd in Texas

Day 82: Design Recap

2024-03-30T13:27:00.000-05:00

These were made on Tuesday, sorry for the late post.

Other controls items we are working on

Improved pose/vision aiming
Faster amp scoring
Improved feeding/passing auto-aiming
Faster climb/trap sequence

Days 78-79 Houston District Event Recap

2024-03-30T13:26:00.007-05:00

Results:

District Event Finalist

Industrial Design Award

Last weekend, Spectrum competed at the Houston District Event. We went 10-7-0 overall, and finished ranked 4th. We won every playoff match in the upper bracket and lost both finals. Thank you to our alliance captain 9478 Robo-Colts and our alliance partner 8144 Red Chair Robotics!

We were honored to be awarded the Industrial Design Award.

Failures and Fixes:

Ultraviolet held up very well at this event. We only had two small mechanical failures.

Failure: One side of our launcher’s sector gear popped out of its gear for a moment on a heavy impact. It did not affect our ability to launch.

Fix: Added a steel plate to the inside of sector gear on that side to prevent this from happening again.

Failure: We bent our frame on our intake side on a heavy impact. It did not affect our ability to intake.

Fix: Replaced it to practice, and time the fix. We discovered that replacing the intake-side rails took around 45 minutes to replace, which was longer than we would like. To address this, we considered several options, one of which was having a complete intake spare ready to be swapped in. However, we decided against relying on having time to replace the intake and instead be able to run multiple matches with bent rails. We are changing some mounting locations for a camera, and some intake geometry to make this work.

Controls update:

Autonomous

We ran our center sub 6 note most matches. We tuned it during the event until it consistently scored 5-6 notes throughout playoffs. We ran our less tuned source side 4 a couple times in qualifications as well.

Vision

Found that right limelight was for some reason noticeably worse than the others so we disabled pose from that camera for the event
Found that integrating pose from different cameras at once will make pose less stable (each camera is reading a slightly different pose at the same time) --> planned change: use one at a time based on which one is closer/seeing more tags

Code changes

Altered amp timing- Sometimes our amp button would feed the note too far, spitting the note all the way out or just too far to score. We decreased the amount of time it should feed, and that improved the issue.
Increased climb speed to maximum (when we realized it wasn’t already at maximum for some reason)
Our feeding shot worked despite vision issues; we could feed to the area near the amp from anywhere near the midline. Here’s an example; in this match the notes landed too far from the driver station wall and one hit the stage, so we increased launch velocity after this match.

Elastic worked much better than shuffleboard and was a good switch
Again no really big control failures so changes were gradual and minor to avoid regressions

Other notes

Shoutout to our media team, they absolutely killed it this event. Check out our Smugmug to see their work.

Our trap never failed at this event. Here’s a 10 second climb+trap.

Planned Improvements:

Improve auto aim until it is nearly 100% accurate. The plan so far is to retune pivot (much faster now), launcher (much more consistent now), rotation controller (faster and less overshooting); remake our data points much more accurately and with many more points. At events, feed good shots back into the data map (we did a little bit of this towards playoffs at Houston but should do more of it); refine pose strategy to be able to better know where we are (overall at Houston pose was much more jumpy than the silent stuff we saw at Belton); maybe move away from using pose for aiming (instead using vertical and horizontal offsets from the speaker tags). Since speaker launching was not 100% accurate at Houston, our drivers were turned off of using it often.
Add second sensor to prevent amp overfeeding issue
Fully automate climb sequence (including alignment)
Change intake slightly to ensure intaking with bent rail always works

Day 77: Warm Spares and Pre-Houston Updates

2024-03-30T13:26:00.003-05:00

One of our goals coming out of Belton was to swap any major control system component with as little downtime as possible. To achieve this, we have created our Warm Spares Bin. This bin allows us to have pre-configured control system devices, where we can upload the latest code to MicroSD cards, and set CAN IDs of replacement devices while the original is being removed.

This bin is a collection of every configurable control system component on our robots and several spare microSD cards, already imaged, set team number, and code deployed as the latest pre-event build. We power the box using one of our normal robot batteries, with a light switch to switch it on and a 30A ATM fuse.

Additionally, we made an active CAN bus, with firmware updated for each of our CAN device types and licenses assigned to both 3847 and 8515. This includes a Falcon, Kraken, CANivore, CANcoder, Pidgeon 2.0, and LaserCAN. We have additional unregulated, 5V, and 12V power available for any additional devices needing configuration or offboard testing.

Houston Upgrades

Here is a list of things that are different from Belton to Houston:

New LEDS on old Climber Bar
Total of 4 Limelights for better pose estimation
Fully Metal Gearbox instead of 3D-Printed on Intake
New Intake rollers
Sector on Launcher Gear is steel instead of aluminum
Launching using vision, no longer using setpoints
Completly redigned climber to get trap mechanism higher above the lower lip
More refined amp trap
Using Elastic dashboard instead of Shuffleboard.

Day 75: Design Recap

2024-03-30T13:25:00.006-05:00

We compete in at the Houston district this weekend with both 3847 and 8515. Both robots have seen some upgrades to improve their performance. We worked to make our intake more inconsistent and remove the few jams and failure modes we saw at our first events. Software has been improved on both machines as well.

Feeding - When our robot is near the center line or beyond, it auto aims to a feed location and launches over the stage.

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Comp-Season/i-h2RBZfq/0/Ckb3cHPv55dsHdx6cDQcs2NWVX3nncTvx5N5wvctC/1920/feeding%20kind%20of-1920.mp4

Vision Aim - We are using pose to aim to the speaker

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Comp-Season/i-4TD859x/0/NXm7nTCfF9d4NdmhbvJBtvNLF5zwg8CdT3gkdrWh/1920/auto%20aim%201-1920.mp4

Amp Launching - As a backup amp mechanism if our amptrap isn’t working.

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Comp-Season/i-L5WXvFB/0/FcPTLDjm8DZ2dvjhZnwsZVMbK76GF5bbND8BGQtsp/1920/amp%20launching%201-1920.mp4

Trap Climb at 118’s Field

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Comp-Season/i-2PwMFj4/0/FWn9RCVBc28gc56xdNf6DTDck6QZBGXMvGLMM6GWB/1920/IMG_4151-1920.mp4

Trap Climb on our Stage

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Comp-Season/i-GQDrhnT/0/DHHw3SLjgfqjskd8CZgLZwdZSWC3d3WxdH44RxDJV/1920/IMG_1201-1920.mp4

Day 68: Design Recap

2024-03-30T13:25:00.002-05:00

We actually did this yesterday but forgot to add it to the blog.

Day 62, 63, 64: Belton District Event Recap

2024-03-30T13:23:00.003-05:00

Results:

District Event Winner

Autonomous Award

Last weekend, Spectrum competed at the Belton District Event. We went 16-1-0 overall, and finished ranked 1st. We won every playoff match in the upper bracket and both finals matches. Thank you so much to our alliance partners 5414 Pearadox and 9054 Johnson City Joules!

We were honored to be awarded the first Autonomous Award in Spectrum history.

Failures and Fixes:

Failure: Qual 44 and playoff match 10. Cause unknown at the moment. Suspected RoboRio USB failure.

Qual 44:

Our robot stopped suddenly 7 seconds into autonomous. Driver station read “Autonomous Stopped”
We couldn’t move in teleop, although the RSL was blinking. We restarted roborio, during which we disconnected from the field, and we could finally move after roborio came back.
After the match: Question box. Official logs couldn’t find a cause of the failure, resulting in no replay. (This was the one match we lost by the way.)

Playoff 10:

Auton ended abruptly in a similar fashion to Qual 44, but driver station read “Autonomous Enabled.” Couldn’t move in teleop until after restarting RoboRio.

Fix: Unknown. It doesn’t add up to be a CAN issue. Unofficial AdvantageScope logs abruptly ended when the robot stopped moving. It’s possible the JVM is crashing but we didn’t lose robot code light on the DS. The USB bus fully failing would explain why the CANivore disconnects and the logs stop writing to the USB drive. We’re going to keep working on it. Please let us know if you’ve experienced something similar.

Failure: Roborio SD corrupted itself. This has happened several times this year to other teams

Fix: We had a prepared SD card, so we just had to change team number and upload code. Was relatively fast before Finals 2.

Failure: CAN disconnecting and reconnecting briefly, causing the robot to stop for a few seconds in teleop in a few matches.

Fix: Not sure, maybe it’s caused by the same USB roborio issue that was causing other failures, but it’s something to track back at the lab. (We’ve seen momentary CAN disconnects during driving on Alpha, PM, and Ultraviolet but diagnosing it has been hard without being able to replicate it).

Failure: Intake top roller seemed to bend weirdly, getting the note stuck between top roller and polycarb front rail blocker.

Fix: We replaced the top roller and that fixed the issue. We probably need to make that blocker slightly taller so the note can’t get stuck there.

Failure: Launcher standoff broke

Fix: Moved it to another spot

Failure: Battery polycarb cover broke

Fix: Switched which bolt holes we use and added washers to the mounts

Failure: Bent lower intake rail. Didn’t affect performance as far as we could tell.

Fix: Replace it

Failure: Amp trap gearbox got angled and eventually stuck.

Fix: Adding a 10-32 in the bearing hole stopped the cantilever and fixed the issue. (Originally tried with 8-32, but it fell out)

Failure: Intake kept misfeeding, flipping notes vertical.

Fix: Eject and re-intake fixed it in match. Will add a polycarb flap or something to force notes to stay horizontal after being intake.

Controls update:

Autonomous

We ran our center 5 note auton every match. It went very well.

Vision

We did not use vision at Belton, but we were logging lots of information about tag distance, and estimated pose from the cameras as well as trying out 3 strategies for integrating camera data into odometry pose. In order to align to field objects using pose we have to be able to keep pose as accurate as possible throughout the match, and the data will be useful in determining patterns to see when vision is most helpful.

Code changes

As for code changes during the event they were mostly minor in order to avoid regressions:

changed pilot turbo mode to slow mode
adjusted launch angle for podium shot
LED changes
Changed operator climb sequence to automate feeding the note up to amptrap

Planned Improvements:

Build the redesigned climber. More about it can be seen in this post. https://www.chiefdelphi.com/t/spectrum-3847-build-blog-2024/447471/413
Get pose working, auto aim working
Change sector gear reinforcements from aluminum to steel (we broke a few teeth on the polycarbonate plates.)

Pit Banner

Day 60: Week 9 Recap (Comp Week 2)

2024-03-05T20:41:00.004-06:00

Day 56, 57: Katy Event Recap for Photon 8515

2024-03-05T20:40:00.003-06:00

Results:

Gracious Professionalism Award

This weekend, Photon competed at the Katy District Event. To begin, we would like to thank our alliance captain the 9478 Robo-Colts, and our other alliance member the 9121 Mavericks. We would also like to congratulate the winning alliance of 118, 8576, 7616.

Photon went 7-8-0 overall at this event, and finished ranked 18th before being invited by 9478 to join their alliance. After inviting 9121 to our alliance, we fell to the lower bracket after playing against the 2nd alliance. After that we won against the 6th alliance in the lower bracket and then fell to the 1st alliance.

In addition to this, we were honored to be awarded the Gracious Professionalism Award and look forward to competing in the Houston District Event.

Failures and Fixes:

Failure: The intake that Photon has is the exact same version of the 3847’s intake, but the way that we move the note from the intake to the indexer and launcher is different. We have an extra 2x1 added to the inner frame where the note rides up against. This caused different problems that weren’t seen on the 3847 robot due to the note having to be more vertical to contact the index rollers. During the later qualification matches on Friday, we had a couple of issues that required us to fix the intake in different ways after each match.

1st incident: We believe the intake roller became unbolted due to not checking them after every match to see if they were tightened which caused them to fall off at the end of the match after having issues with it during the match.

2nd incident: During this match, we had trouble with the intake jamming and not fully intaking. We found out after the match that the hot glue that held the hub to the roller became detached.

The glue holding hub to roller snapped, so we put a bolt to re-secure them together

3rd incident: Pulley got worn down thanks to the intake jamming

4th incident: Then the belt got worn down too because we didn’t replace it when we changed the pulley

Fix: To make sure this doesn’t happen in the future, we will be replacing the belt along with the pulley when the pulley is worn down or breaks. For our roller, to prevent the hot glue from getting dislodged, we put another screw into the roller to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Failure: We have several autons, but we have one specifically which is designed to collect and shoot 4 notes into the speaker. During this auton in one of our matches, however, two notes got jammed in our intake which caused us to get a penalty. For the rest of the match, no matter how many times we tried, we were unable to eject the notes, therefore we weren’t able to score and collect any more notes during the whole match. One of the notes got stuck above our top roller while the other one got stuck below the first one (shown in the picture below).

Fix: To (hopefully) prevent this from happening in future matches, we are planning on installing a plate that is on the Spectrum 3847 robot. This plate will be mounted above the top roller to stop the note from getting stuck above the roller, and giving it a more direct path into the feeder.

Controls update:

For Katy, we knew that we wanted to try and use our 4-note auton. The first time we ran it in Quals, we were only able to get 2 out of the 4 notes because we bumped into one of our alliance members. This being said, our auton most likely would have worked if they lined up a little bit closer to the driver station. Then we had another chance to run our auton, but were only able to get 3 out of 4 notes because the robot didn’t move far enough to be able to intake the 4th note. We then tried running our 4-note auton again, but only got 1 out of 4 notes in the speaker because we had trouble with our intake and the note didn’t shoot out of the feeder. We were then able to run the auton for a fourth time but the note was preloaded too high and the robot didn’t get aligned with the speaker, causing it to shoot over. During Playoffs, we also ran our 4-note auton, however had a lot of trouble intaking and feeding the note.

Planned Improvements:

Add some plates above the intake that hold the note in place when the arm is up to prevent the note from slipping out
Add wedges so only one note can enter horizontally in intake
Add a button where we can lock on the angle for each chain on the stage
Podium shot
Button to lock on directions for amp and subwoofer
Add shaft so if we get one hook for climb it will slide over and other one will catch
Visual feedback of a note through leds
Get the 4 note auto working

And just a fun fact: For the third year in a row at Photon’s first event, we won Gracious Professionalism!

Day 53: Week 8 Design Recap

2024-02-27T20:38:00.008-06:00

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-8-2024/i-KKsHPRt/0/DjWcdjrCjPCv5vx5rZvhV6kvc57PcFcnHWrc3vLHN/1920/PXL_20240227_223637506.TS-1920.mp4

Day 51 & 52: New AmpTrap Concept

2024-02-27T20:38:00.004-06:00

We have been playing around with various ways to improve our trap mechanism while still letting us amp quickly. The new mechanism is basically a powered cape.

Amp Score

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-8-2024/i-XkCPqsc/0/5sCZbx8wH7Qqv7zfL5wjrwrnffg7LfCkMS3DNcd7/1920/Amp%20with%20roller%20cape-1920.mp4

Trap Score

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-8-2024/i-LPPJjQr/0/Zwbw33SVRJfQsLMcrDRvtS52JhD2RdmCXfgMJXjm/1920/IMG_3902-1920.mp4

This works pretty well and we’ll make a better version this week.

Day 50: Photon Does Things and Intake Reliability Upgrade

2024-02-27T20:38:00.001-06:00

Photon Update

Today we got software set up on Photon to amp, climb and subwoofer. We realized that the original gearing on the arm was too low and that the arm would not be able to support the robot enough to stay up on the chain for 5 seconds. To solve this, we changed the gearing and we were able to stay up after being disabled.

We have plans to get a podium shot and a limelight mounted on the robot before our second district event.

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-7-2024/i-wc3JK7c/0/FKnfNsKMKfstVHRWgWDK38H588mzRBWfgWwBGw82K/1920/PXL_20240225_030045217-1920.mp4

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-7-2024/i-C34WCvf/0/FdqHX7cXK3vBfgVRw4tmfKNrXDcQSP9nWSGxm43bb/1920/PXL_20240224_231355237-1920.mp4

Intake Updates:

After breaking our Intake yesterday and much discussion, we decided to re-inforce it with 0.090” aluminum and raise the leading edge to avoid it hitting the bottom of the truss.

Day 47, 48, & 49: Driver Practice & Photon Update

2024-02-27T20:37:00.003-06:00

Full Field Driver Practice

Today we visited our friends at Pearadox #5414 and did some driver practice on their full sized field. Here is a clip from driver practice.

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-7-2024/i-3SfDfFM/0/FBpvd3cnxgTt6bSDcGBjB5tSmRrmrf4CsR4LrHn7c/1920/amp%20and%20two-1920.mp4

Unedited full footage can be found in our photo gallery. We were able to consistently run two amp cycles, one speaker, and then another speaker within ten seconds of the first one (within amplification time.) We don’t yet have Apriltag aiming, so we were only subwoofer-ing during these countdowns. Cycles will get faster with auto aim to both amp and speaker.

Failures

Ramp from intake scraped off, caused by scraping the thin rectangle of aluminum of the real stage, when rotating to shoot a podium shot. We did not put it back on the robot.

Intake plate broke and the launcher pivot was able to pop out on one side. Caused by hitting the same truss as before. It was a pretty medium strength hit. The broken intake could still intake/eject, but it was scary because the lower roller could also get sucked under the robot.

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-7-2024/i-fHCz9qW/0/DX2mjrDK3V5FXqztH3mG7QJd8jsMhLcgSQ37swVwS/1920/IMG_9850-1920.mp4

Pearadox has a real stage! Unfortunately, our trap attempts were unsuccessful. Climbing was good, but the amp/trap mechanism needs modification to ensure the belt doesn’t skip, and that the note stays in contact with two rollers at all times. Otherwise, it looks promising.

Intaking multiple game pieces at once. It was easy to intake multiple game pieces at once at a source with lots of notes around. Intaking multiple notes could damage the notes and get them stuck inside the robot. We don’t yet have a camera facing the intake, so we just had to guess and check.

Photon Update

Photon is getting ready for our first event in five days! We are trying to get the robot ready to practice at Pearadox this weekend on Sunday which we will probably be running the wooden launcher plates to make sure it will work for the Katy District event we will be competing at.

We got our robot running to test our launcher shots and see if we could actually amp well. Our launcher angle was too low, so we need to make changes to make sure our angle is higher to make subwoofer shots in our default position.

We still need to design the climber which will be attached to our arm which will also help get our launch angle higher because it’ll hit our hardstop first. We’re almost done making both bumpers to be ready for our event soon.

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-7-2024/i-HpghVCm/0/CGP7fSfLGXm4PBvBhrM3m3x4N4GBp6GBLhpBHDnhc/1920/PXL_20240224_004937170-1920.mp4

Day 45 & 46: Design Recap

2024-02-20T20:54:00.006-06:00

Day 43 & 44: PM Driver Practice

2024-02-20T20:54:00.002-06:00

We have some uncut driver practice videos up on our gallery. We have limited space so we are only working in a half field. The robot is still missing most of it’s automation so everything we ran today was fully manual with only motor sensors running. Over the next few days, we’ll work on getting aiming and sensors on the robot + the climb.

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-6-2024/i-8ZsbfJR/0/3xtF8SNNJCMxRL2QFfcJCHD986nF9FDpQ88p54Tq/1920/6-GX010075-1920.mp4

More Here: https://photos.spectrum3847.org/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-6-2024

Day 42: PM Running

2024-02-20T20:53:00.005-06:00

Over the past few days, we were able to get PM fully assembled (minus climb, and laserCANs), and wired. We also made our first set of bumpers of the year (4 more sets to go FM and Photon).

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-6-2024/i-cj59L3G/0/CZt6V3G4CGMhkChCLFC232HMBpVKzbdhQcsdwV7Cz/1920/PXL_20240217_024022334.TS-1920.mp4

We noticed our launcher was pulling a lot of current even though this was built better than alpha. Each motor was drawing 50A at full power. After some tweaking, we removed the redundant belts to remove drag from the system and got the current down to 30A per motor. Still have some more changes to go before we are happy with it.

Day 40 & 41: Photon Update

2024-02-20T20:53:00.001-06:00

We were able to get a little bit more of our Photon 8515 robot completed over the last two days. We have the intake and drive train setup along with the arm. Over the long weekend, we will be working on electrical and manufacturing of the feeder and launcher system.

Day 39: Week 6 Design Recap

2024-02-13T22:41:00.005-06:00

Day 39: Week 6 Design Recap

PM is nearing completion and should run on Thursday night.
Once PM is running we will quickly manufacture and assemble FM

Much of that can happen over the long weekend. Lots of assembly this weekend.

Auton is in a good place on AM
Drive practice begins soon
Now it’s time to find any and all ways that the robot can break or fail and fix them before competition season.

Also places that maintenance will be annoying and fix those too.

We are basically exactly where we were last year.

Day 38

2024-02-13T00:20:00.001-06:00

Day 38: <3

More of PM was assembled today.

FM Drivetrain

Launcher

The launcher is complete and we added torsion springs to help balance it and remove some backlash. We also shimmed the gears today and removed a good amount of the backlash in the system.

PTFE Film

We put PTFE film on all the flat surfaces the note touches.

Day 37: Auton and PM Assembly

2024-02-12T21:58:00.003-06:00

5 Note Auton

We were able to have our controls team work with the Alpha robot over the past few days. They were able to begin tuning in some of our auton paths. We successfully made a few 5-note autos. The launcher tilt on AM is inconsistent so we are most worried about our paths and intaking which is looking great.

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-5-2024/i-kRjGbgL/0/1eb89c7c/1920/IMG_5885-1920.mp4

PM Assembly and

We’ve been able to get more of the practice machine assembled. It has all but 4 motors mounted (elevator, climber, and 2 launchers). The intake is fully mounted. The launcher and amptrap mechanisms are nearly complete. Climber still has a little ways to go but that’s always last.

Robot Weight

We weighed PM at the end of the night and got an approximate weight of our competition robot.

Day 35 & 36: PM Assembly

2024-02-10T23:13:00.004-06:00

3D printing

We have our print farm running a lot of production parts for the 3 robots (PM, FM, & Photon). Here are some of the timelapses from the Bambu X1C.

Intake Gears+Pulleys
https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-5-2024/i-HRkDPS9/0/0ae070c6/1280/video_2024-02-09_21-42-06-1280.mp4

1.25” OD Roller Pulleys

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-5-2024/i-Q8GN5sS/0/8548239e/O/video_2024-02-10_02-32-22.jpg

Elevator Top Frame Support

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-5-2024/i-DZXk497/0/bc82826e/O/video_2024-02-07_20-13-13.jpg

Laser Cutting

This is our laser cutting a test part of the launcher sector gear so we can test the fit. We manually adjusted the teeth size to remove some of the backlash in this gear.

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-5-2024/i-DMfhfzj/0/3eab084c/1920/PXL_20240210_220520079.TS-1920.mp4

CNC Router

It’s hard to get a good video through the chip curtains but this is our router cutting some of the climber+elevator gussets.

(It’s a loud video)

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-5-2024/i-PQWvRR4/0/3cdd129a/1920/PXL_20240211_011708407.TS-1920.mp4

Tapping Station

This is a video I made a couple of weeks ago to show someone how the tapping station we purchased in the fall works. It’s pneumatically powered and has a lever to turn it on and a button for reverse. It has made tapping shafts so much faster and we’ve used that to design a lot of standoff into this year’s robot.

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-5-2024/i-FPfDpRK/0/7e6e3cff/1920/PXL_20240130_193705970.TS.mp4~2-1920.mp4

Test Fitting Controls

We started test-fitting our electronics layout. Our general plan is to leave as much of the belly pan open as possible for electronics and then just fit them where they make the most sense. Nearly everything is held down by VHB or foam mounting.

Day 34: More Trap Testing and PM Assembly

2024-02-08T23:09:00.005-06:00

Trap Testing

We did some limited trap testing with a new hook geometry and bearing setup.

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-57bLqrP/0/1920/i-57bLqrP-1920.mp4

PM Assembly

We have begun rapidly assembling our practice robot. The intake plates, elevator, and main indexer+launcher pivot plate are mounted.

Intake Wedge printed in PCTG.

Day 33: Sponsors

2024-02-08T23:08:00.002-06:00

We're incredibly thankful for the support from our sponsors. Their backing is essential to our continued success. This year, we're excited to team up with these fantastic companies and organizations:

https://photos.smugmug.com/Brand/Sponsor-Logos-2024/i-PzHJTMx/0/71a8f74f/1920/spons-1920.mp4

Strake Jesuit

St. Agnes Academy

Dow
The Boeing Company

Texas Workforce Commission

Intuitive Foundation

Day 32: Week 5 Design Recap

2024-02-06T21:43:00.004-06:00

Photon 8515

We haven’t talked about our sibling team much this year. 8515 Photon is our development team primarily constructed by students new to our program this year, mostly 9th and 10th graders. In previous years 8515 built an Everybot but we found the students weren’t learning to design and build in the same systems we use on the 3847 robots. This year we have decided to work on a custom design that shares a similar drive train and intake to 3847 but has a different superstructure. 8515 is building a similar archetype to several open alliance teams such as 2582 and 3467. 8515 will be competing at Katy and Houston district events this season.

Day 31: Trap and PM drivetrain

2024-02-05T22:57:00.004-06:00

Full Robot Trap Climb

After some more adjustments to the climb and amp-trap scoring mechanism, we were able to get a few full trap climbs.

https://photos.smugmug.com/2024-FRC/Build-Season/Week-5-2024/i-5rVd5Rs/0/e092da03/1920/IMG_3816-1920.mp4

Practice Machine Drivetrain

Our practice machine drivetrain is mostly assembled. We will be getting motors mounted in the next few days.