Spectrum 2020 Design Slides

Throughout the season we kept a design slide deck that allowed us to keep notes and document our designs and ideas. We are releasing this to the public so people can see how some of our ideas developed. We did go back through this document to add a few slides that were based on notes in other places and it was updated throughout the season so some of the kickoff area slides aren't really from kickoff.

Link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13yS35uDdEM2lEDKCAESrFgklObFr6WldLW2VufSugBQ/edit#slide=id.g8165cb3ccd_2_5

Design Review #10

Design Review #10

Everybot Progress Photos + Gluing Balls

Everybot

Our Everybot project should be driving next week. We made a few changes from the original design already but overall, it's mostly stock. The two biggest changes are it has a NEO for a climber motor and only has one set of gear on the arm.

Ball Glue

Team update 16 has a link to a ball repair guide for events. We wanted to test the glue that is specified and see how repaired balls felt. We bought the glue and repaired a ball and left it overnight. It seems to seal up the cuts pretty well but with our first test ball, it didn't cause the cuts to become airtight again so the ball was still easy to compress, similar to before we glued the cuts. The places that are glued do feel a bit harder, then normal places on the ball. We glued the rest of our cut-up balls today and we should be able to test shooting them next week. (we are taking the weekend off, everyone needs a break)




Spectrum

VP Ratchet Climber Lock

Many teams have asked us about our climber break from last season. We mentioned possibly using it this season and showed a small CAD image.

We want to give a full story into the development of this break.

Last season we planned to use the VP ratchet in a normal way and have a cylinder pull a string to disengage the pawl.  When we did that we either could disengage the pawl or couldn't engage it properly. We also heard of people breaking the pawls.

While at champs we were looking for a way to brake our climber that didn't use the pawl. SOTAbots (FRC#25570 were in our division and they had a great climber break that they showed us. Here is a picture we took.

We worked in our pit to make a version of this but we couldn't custom make the parts they did. So we removed the out shell of the ratchet and just used the spacers. We also tried to use a normal bolt but we broke it, so instead, we just use the pneumatic rod end directly into the ratchet. We found that it didn't damage the rod end at all when doing this.

For IRI our setup looked like this.

The VP dual input doesn't have the rear bolts so we need to clamp on the cylinder.

We have heard from several teams that have used this setup with great success. We aren't using it this year. For Dripping Springs we were able to just use our NEO climb motors in brake mode, with about a 30:1 reduction on our elevator and our robot would stay in the air for more than enough time to keep the climb.

We do have a latch mounted on our robot.

This latch uses a laser-cut Delrin ratchet that is pressed on to the pinion of one of our NEOs. We haven't tested this setup yet as we haven't needed it. We do plan to get it working so if we climb late enough to not be at the top of our climb we will stay off the ground.

Spectrum

Design Review Comp Week 2 - Dripping Springs Debrief

Debrief and Design Review

The design review and debrief slides are below. For our first event, we wanted to keep things simple and straight forward.

Our plans included.
- 3 Ball Autonomous that could push one or two robots off the initiation line and then get us ready for telop.
- Quick cycles to the initiation line area when possible or the tench-run when needed. It was okay to shoot 3 to 5 balls per cycle.
- Climb every match

We did most of these well, our omni-wheels breaking due to side impacts was an unexpected hurdle that will have resolved before our next event. There were many matches where we were limping along due to these issues.

Moving forward we plan to iterate and improve our machine, get more rigorous driver practice, and improve our auton scoring. We are also stopping development on the buddy climb after seeing several failed attempted climbs by other teams that had similar designs to ours.

Notes from Dripping Springs

- We had a fantastic alliance with 1477 and 3240
- It's always great getting to work with Scott and 1477 they are one of the programs that we have been looking up to for many years. It was awesome to finally get to win an event with them.
- We have no idea how 3240 fell all the way to the 24th pick. We had them much higher in our scouting tiers. They had a great drive train (6 NEO Ball shifter) that was ready to play defense when asked and a drive team that was knowledgable and skilled to do it. They were also one of the few teams with a working control panel device and nearly got it done in several of our playoff matches. They were awesome to work with; taking advice and applying it quickly to get even better every match.
- The ball stuck in our drive train was a pain to get out. - https://www.chiefdelphi.com/t/the-long-shot/374718/113?u=allengregoryiv
- The volunteers and venue were awesome. April and Tim did a great job working with teams and getting through week 1 field issues.

2020 Dripping Springs District Quick Recap

We will have our debrief meeting/design review tomorrow after school, so we should have a full recap then.

We had a great time at the Dripping Springs District Event. The volunteers and venue were wonderful. We highly recommend teams sign up for this event in future years.

Our students did an awesome job of preparing for the competition and getting the robot ready. We knew for our first event we wanted to keep things simple and do what we knew we could do well. We shot largely from one or two areas and attempted to climb every match. We had several issues through the event that we had to work through to be ready for each match but we pushed hard in the pit to get things ready every time. It led us to an 17-1 record, the #1 seed, and the Championship with our partners Texas Torque (FRC#1477) and Team Orion (FRC#3240).

We also prepared heavily to speak with the judges both in the pits and for Chairman's. We won the Engineering Inspiration Award for our work in providing resources for FRC teams and spreading STEM in our community. Our Chairman's team did an excellent job preparing and presenting for the judges, our feed back was positive which is always good. There were several amazing teams at this event and only one could win, and we couldn't be happier for our friends and alliance partners Texas Torque, they have one of the best programs in the world and it's always fun working with them, what they do for their local community and for communities around the world is truly amazing.

More photos and videos can be seen in our photo gallery - https://photos.spectrum3847.org/2020-FRC/Feb--28---March-1--Week-One---Dr/Dripping-Springs-2020/

Thank you to all the volunteers and teams for making it a great event,
Spectrum