Iron Claw Editor

Our first competition was the San Francisco Regional. We ran into technical difficulties, particularly with the electrical board. Our planning for assembly was not up to par, so we were faced with mechanical issues as well. From there, we knew what we had to do in order to perform better at the next competition. Although our performance at SFR was not as successful as we had hoped, we agreed that this was a stepping stone we could utilize in order to learn from our mistakes. Putting this into practice, we spent a lot of time in the two weeks before our second competition testing and refining our mechanisms on our second robot. By the time of the Silicon Valley Regional, it had become clear that all of the hard work we put into preparing had paid off: our robot ran much more smoothly, and we had improved to the point that we were the number one robot for delivering cargo. After 80 qualification matches, alliance selection began and our performance earned us a spot alongside the fourth seed alliance, headed by Team 604. In the playoffs, we made it through the quarterfinals and semifinals to ultimately compete against Team 254, one of the best teams in the world. Although we ultimately lost against them, as a result of [...]

Now that Week 6 and the entire build season is over, we have finished our robot and bagged it! We had a lot of work to do this week, but everybody contributed and we managed to accomplish all of the goals we planned out in Week 5. At the beginning of the week, our programmers worked hard to finish up our drive code and vision/alignment systems. Later in the week, we held our driver tryouts in order to choose our driver and operator. We finished the assembly of our robot and were in a bit of a time crunch to tie up a few final loose ends on the very last day, but we powered through and got it done. Our first competition is San Francisco Regional, and we’re hoping for a good performance!

As Week 5 comes to an end, we only have one more week to work on our robot before it’s bagged and tagged. Although all of our mechanisms have been machined or assembled, we still need to attach them to our drivetrain and begin testing all within the next week. For now, we finalized our CAD this week, so we are ready to continue assembly and testing. We also tested our drivetrain in order to make sure it’s running properly, and hope to test our other mechanisms in Week 6 as well. We have quite a bit of work cut out for us, but with our increased efficiency and the longer work hours that inevitably accompany the end of build season, we should be able to pull it off. Be sure to tune in next week for DESTINATION: TESTING AND BAGGING.

We’re currently behind but catching up fast. Even though there’s only a little over two weeks left in build season, we still have about half the number of hours remaining. I guess that’s what happens when our schedule is heavily skewed toward more hours at the end of build season. Going into Week 5, we have a driving robot, which is a big milestone in build season. On the mechanical side, our CADers have been working on our elevator mechanism and the elevator carriage. Instead of the monorail elevator design we used last year, we are making an elevator with two rails parallel to one another–a design that proved successful in 2018. CADers also worked on gearboxes and other integrative components to finish our mechanisms and overall design. Meanwhile, our machinists have worked on brackets, hex hubs, and elevator rails (which they are still working on). Assembly and electrical members have focused on building our chassis from our machined drive rails and constructing our electrical boards. We chose to build two robots this year, and currently our first robot chassis is fully assembled with an electrical board, while our second robot is slightly behind without attached electronics. Having learned from our mistake of using a slanted electrical board last year, [...]

Summary of Week 3: Lots done, lots to go. The main focuses this week were CAD and manufacturing. Our robot CAD is nearly complete, and we have manufactured our robot’s drive rails and brackets for the chassis. Meanwhile, programmers created our state-space library and wrote the code to control our elevator and wrist mechanisms. With the confirmation of design came the beginning of fabrication, with students working diligently in the metal shop to make drive rails for the drivetrain. We were able to begin working on the drivetrain fairly quickly, as we used a parametrically CAD-ed chassis made during the offseason to save valuable work time. Although the final robot CAD is not done, we have made progress in fully designing the individual mechanisms and planning how they fit together. We are especially emphasizing discussion and design reviews in order to ultimately have a better product. The CAD team worked vigorously this week to transform our CAD from a mock elevator on a semi-complete drive base into a full robot design complete with a drivetrain and mechanisms. All that remains is a few refinements: brackets, size adjustments, and mounting holes. Our robot design–now that it is more fully fleshed out–has an elevator with an arm attached to lift balls and [...]

This week, we have made a consensus on the overall design of our robot, consisting of a four-wheel mecanum drive train, v-block hatch intake, and mecanum rolly grabber intake for cargo. The v-blocks and a tray for cargo are planned to be mounted on an elevator to bring the game pieces to be deposited at different heights. We decided to go with a mecanum drive train rather than our usual west coast drive because it helps with precise alignment on the rocket and cargo bay. With the confirmation of design came the beginning of fabrication, with students working diligently in the metal shop to make drive rails for the drivetrain. We were able to begin working on the drivetrain fairly quickly, as we used a parametrically CAD-ed chassis made during the offseason to save valuable work time. Although the final robot CAD is not done, we have made progress in fully designing the individual mechanisms and planning how they fit together. We are especially emphasizing discussion and design reviews in order to ultimately have a better product. Once our programmers were familiarized with our mechanisms and new code structure, the delegation of tasks began, with small groups of 2-3 people being assigned a subsystem to program. To organize the code, the programming [...]

Our fourth build season began on Saturday, January 5th. Throughout the week, we have been familiarizing ourselves with the 2019 FRC game, DESTINATION: DEEP SPACE. On Kickoff day, our members met up at 6:40 AM to attend the local FRC Kickoff event at San Jose State University–not too fun if you’ve been sleeping in all break. Later, after getting the team together and having social time over brunch (thanks Brian, we love your tacos!), we delved into the game further. Deep Space involves placing cargo (bouncy kickballs) and hatch panels (polycarbonate disks) into holes on two “rockets” and a “cargo ship.” We noticed that the ball’s movement is unpredictable and that both game pieces require precise maneuvering. Compared to last season, scoring points will be more difficult and time-consuming. There are many viable approaches for scoring points in this year’s game, so we prototyped mechanisms for multiple strategies before deciding on one. For the next few days, we brainstormed, prototyped mechanisms, and experimented with a mecanum drive train. For both hatch panels and cargo, we made an intake prototype with v-block clamps, modeled after v-block vices used in manufacturing to hold circular objects. The mechanism clamped both game pieces well, but it had trouble ensuring that cargo rolls [...]