Monthly Archives: January 2023

Week 3 was a very decisive week for the whole team. We started off the week with design presentations of our prototypes. We narrowed down our options for our robot. We decided on 5 main designs: The Angled Elevator with 4 bar and layered intake, the Angled Elevator with 4 bar, RI3D grabber and extending wheels orienter, the 4 Bar Lead screw, (“Wheeled”) layered intake with a fixed bar orienter, the 971 Arm, RI3D grabber with extending wheels orienter, and the 971 arm with wheeled Intake and extending wheels orienter. With these designs, we did a team decision matrix where we split into five groups and scored each design based on a couple different criterias. The results of this are the designs with the RI3D Grabber were voted least. The 4 Bar Lead screw, (“Wheeled”) layered intake with a fixed bar orienter and the 971 arm with wheeled Intake and extending wheels orienter were pretty even in terms of votes. The Angled Elevator with 4 bar, layered intake was the clear winner. Our DVC voted and we ended up choosing the angled elevator with a 4 bar arm, a layered intake and a fixed bar orienter. On the mechanical side of the team, the machinists have been working on the belly pan and bumpers of the robot. The [...]

Week two was another successful week with progress across all of the team.  Our prototyping groups continued researching and testing different designs. We are prototyping a variety of designs that can be used to pick up the game pieces of the 2023 FRC Game Charged Up. Our groups consist of a 971 Arm, Extending wheels, Layered Intake with Fixed Bar, screw extender and elevator (Four Bar Arm), Ri3D Grabber, and a Rotate and Extend arm. Extending wheels is a design incorporating an orienter and linear slider and implements wheels to intake the object. The Layered Intake with Fixed Bar uses a bar to reorient the cone in a position that intakes the object with wheels in a layered design. The Ri3D Grabber is able to pick up fallen and vertical cones and cubes in certain angles and uses pneumatics to clasp onto the game piece. Meanwhile, the 971 Arm, Four Bar Arm, and Rotate and Extend arm are still in the progress of CADing. This week, the prototyping groups will present their design to the team so that we can decide the best way for our robot to hold and carry the game pieces. We are planning to determine different combinations of these prototypes and decide which designs work best with others. Moving over to the mechanical section [...]

After a successful last season, Iron Claw Robotics is charged up for the 2023 Charged Up build season! On Saturday, January 7th, the team kicked off the season with much anticipation. The 2023 game is a pick-and-place game with two game pieces, cubes, and cones that robots must deposit on poles and steps. The endgame is a balancing ramp, similar to Rebound Rumble, but somewhat more manageable due to the two pivot points. Top-down view of the control systems components on the belly pan After devising game strategies and brainstorming the capabilities of our robot, power outages cut our first week short across Los Gatos, with a fallen tree cutting off power to Los Gatos High School for three days. This severely altered our schedule, pushing back the finalization of the prototype designs. Once we came back to school, we finished brainstorming designs and selected seven subsystems to prototype over the course of the week. We broke up the subsystems into three categories: arms, orienters, and grabbers. We are working on creating CADs for each arm, and the orienters and grabbers have been laser cut and are being tested.  In terms of the drivetrain, the team selected to go with a swerve as we concluded it will give the team an edge in playing the Charged [...]