They both look great. I really like the de-score mechanism on the B robot.
Might just be me but it looks like you still have to get some number plates on them by worlds.
2438A has always been a role model for me personally, for us to reach the same quality in Driver Skills. I’m just wondering if you still have a High-Hang working? (It seems like you do, with the mechanism you still have on the front.) Both of them look like pretty good quality robots! And gcop, yes both of their 4-bars are geared down 3:1 from what I see. (Which is pretty fast, as far as arms go.)
Good luck you guys, and see you at Worlds!
~Jordan
It’s the same lift speed–I think B may even be a little faster due to reduced weight on the end of the arm.
In terms of drive speed, B outstrips A significantly. In terms of drive power, they’re the same. Shows what a little shaved weight can do. B also has a little trick used on the drive train for added precision; I can’t really describe it adequately but if you come by the pits at Worlds I’ll show you.
High hanging… Honestly, we don’t really know. Which is probably a bad thing. I’d like to advertise us as much as I can, but in the spirit of honesty I must say that we have not tried to hang since Pan Pacific. At Pan Pacific the hang did work, but it didn’t consistently get high. It also ate PWM like the Cookie Monster, because the winch kit wasn’t out yet, and since we still don’t have the winch kit we don’t want to eat the last of our PWM testing it.
So does the low hang work? Yeah. Does the high hang work? Maybe. Do we ever plan on using a hang? …No, not really, and that’s our other reason for not going overtime: we feel that other strategies (goals in ladder, tilting ladder) will beat out hanging at worlds. We could be wrong, in which case we’ll be sad, but there’s no helping that.
2438A was plagued by constant communication issues, all of them occurring at the same radio port on the same field. The good news was that it won every match in which it was able to connect to VexNet (including all of its hardest matches), but the bad news was that its record of 6-3 was not enough to get it into the eliminations. A bot tried to sell itself to high seeds, but none asked it to their alliance–a shame, seeing as it was quite possibly the fastest-scoring robot in the whole division. Trying to fix connection problems (the tech support people were very helpful, but ultimately couldn’t do anything but tell us that the problem wasn’t in our robot) ate up time for skills, but it did get in one Driver Skills run, a low score due to the slippery-tube problem that many teams faced.
2438B was a lot more lucky in qualifications, only dropping one match in a 1v1 to team 2919, and that by three points and a blown motor. We seeded second in Math and selected the awesome 2921B and 1826 to be our alliance partners. Unfortunately, our traditional bad luck caught up with us in quarterfinals, as we dropped two matches to the number 7 seeded alliance. In the first match, 2438B’s battery ziptie lost its “zip”, and the battery fell out when we were rammed. The battery was then driven over and yanked out of the port in the microcontroller, crippling us. We took the next match off to fix the problem, but unfortunately aggressive ramming autonomouses by the opposing alliance sent both 2919B’s drive and 1826’s lift into thermal overload, shutting them down for the whole match. Our spirits perked up considerably when we were announced the winners of the division Amaze award, which was the one award that we really wanted going into the competition.
So, overall, a successful Worlds and better than we’ve ever done before. I do wish that A hadn’t had its connection problems, and that B hadn’t been knocked out of quarterfinals, but luck is part of the game sometimes and you have to take what you get.
Thanks to teams 1826 and 2921b, our awesome partners! We made a great team, and I really thought we could have taken it all the way to World Finals. I couldn’t have been happier with our alliance. Also, thanks to everyone who stopped by the pit to say hi. We’ll see you all around–hopefully at next year’s Worlds!
Time to start working on Gateway… now if only they’d release the Skills rules!
I am mad that 2438A didn’t get picked… man they were a lot better than some teams that got in the finals. Better luck next year guys, I personally will make sure that you get in the finals if you have a robot as good as you did this year. :o
Sorry for being unclear:o, The de-scoring mechanism on the B bot. For just force From the drive train, that’s a pretty violent(and cool). is it just the sudden release of the plastic tip of the goal?
Wow, I never knew this thread existed until a day or two ago when it was revived. I guess that just shows I was inactive on the forums back then.
I was aligned with 2438B in the Engineering division (was it engineering… I cant remember), and they had such a good robot. I seriously think we stood a strong chance of going far in that competition, but what a shame we had such bad luck! At least we played fairly and cleanly, and we didn’t go knocking our opponents out
Anyway, though it is probably far too late, thanks guys for the awesome alliance! You had really cool robots, and I have learn’t far more than I knew back then about your robots.
It’s just the way the force of the drive train combines with the natural rocking tendencies of the heavy low goals. As I recall, the descoring mechanism was just two pieces of triangular lexan on a little arm chained in such a way that it moved upwards with the main arm but more slowly; there was definitely no “wrist” actuation.
Thanks, George, you guys were great too! It was too bad about our awful luck; I really loved our alliance that year.
i was looking forward to seeing them… but if they weren’t deliberate, they’re broken 
