Monthly Archives: February 2023

As February comes to an end, students have been hard at work during their break. We are putting the finishing touches on our robot, and are preparing for our first competition in the upcoming week. This week, the elevator, 4-bar arm, and intake have been mounted onto our robot. This has allowed our electrical team to wire around the superstructure. The wires for the encoders have been mounted on the side of the elevator, and we braided the wires for the sparkmax and NEOs motors to prevent them from becoming tangled. The team has taken careful consideration to ensure that the wiring is as organized as possible. We also wired an e-chain cable carrier, which allows the elevator to extend to the maximum height. The electrical team is using mesh cable shrouds to protect the motor cables for the elevator, to the virtual 4-Bar, and intake/outtake. As our first competition approaches in the upcoming week, our team is working many hours to ensure that our robot is ready. The robot is very close to being finished, and we only have to mount the extending arm to complete the superstructure. The electrical team finished all of the wiring and they are working on organizing the wires to end at one point, creating an efficient modular design. The machining team [...]

Week 6 has ended on a high note, and our team has been hard at work continuing the development of our 2023 robot. As our first competition at Hueneme Port Regional draws closer, our team needs all hands on deck in order to maximize our chances of success! The construction of our superstructure is underway. We are currently working on mounting our elevator and 4-bar arm, and the process is going very well. The elevator has already been mounted on the swerve drivetrain, and the 4-bar arm components are in the process of being machined. While the main construction of the robot is going on, our separate subteams are hard at work doing individual subteam tasks. With the robot beginning to be constructed, our programmers have been able to start testing their code. The programming team is currently working on the elevator code and they will soon be able to test it on the elevator. They are also working on starting the automatic charge station balance code, which would allow our robot to balance on the charge station in an instant using a button. The Intake code is complete and the 4-bar arm code has been merged to main. The Scouting team has been modifying our scouting app to make it more efficient and easier to use for [...]

Another week has gone by and our team has continued to make a lot of progress in each field of our robot construction. Week 5 has ended on a very positive note! Our programming team has been working on their code and preparing it to test on our robot. The Vision team has successfully created a working vision system on our classbot and are continuing to clean up the code. The Scouting team is currently working on the Team display and they have created a fully working Match Display. They are also working on a way to receive scouting data without the use of Wifi. Additionally, the Game Piece programming team has merged their code for the elevator and Four Bar subsystems into the main branch. They are continuing to work on revising code based on feedback on general code structure from our mentors and Programming Director. The Mechanical team has been working hard to fabricate parts for our robot. The Machining team has finished making the Battery Bellypan. The team has finished fabricating the rails and are currently working on the hexshafts and Gearbox mounting plates using the CNC router. Though the Machining team is waiting for the Aluminum Stock to arrive and is experiencing minor issues with the CNC router, they have finished machining most of [...]

After last week’s decision to use an angled elevator with a 4 bar arm, a layered intake, and an extending bar, a lot of progress was made across all subteams in their respective areas! With detailed and precise CADs, our angled elevator team opted for continuous rigging over cascade to keep the robot’s center of mass more balanced when extending. As for rigging, they chose to use dyneema rope because it’s strong and light. They decided to use hall effect sensors for the elevator’s position detection: analog sensors for magnet distance and digital sensors or limit switches for stopping. They worked on implementing an energy chain mount, bearing blocks, and mounting it to the drivetrain. They have also been able to finish their CAD and have started making drawing files, deciding that it would be wisest to first manufacture the carriage. Our four bar arm team switched from their original design idea of a linkage 4 bar to a virtual 4 bar. They have finished CADing and are now making drawing files for machinists. Our team has also been able to add all commercial off the shelf parts and mechanisms, such as hardstops, sprockets, fasteners, and etc. So far, our layered intake is successful in intaking cones, but we are still working on cube intake. The cube is [...]