243A Reveal

VEX Robotics Competition Discussion VRC > Skyrise (14/15)
1

Hello Forum,

We are ATOM 243A! We are a first year middle school team with some second year dude(ets). We have qualified through the Western Washington VRC State Championship, and we grab this wonderful opportunity to go to Worlds. Our 2 year people informed us on how to prepare (they learned the hard way last year XD) for Worlds. And one of the prep thingys was the reveal!

NOTE: IF YOU DON’T WANT TO READ THE HUGE WALL OF TEXT, SKIP TO THE PART WHERE IT SAYS “Here is our REVEAL”

Our robot is mainly a cube robot, but just by adding a portable skyrise builder, we are a pretty strong skyrise team too. We can build all seven skyrises, but can only score cubes on five.

Now that I think about it, let me do this in a more organized manner instead of me just spouting out random specs of our robot…

“Its um tall!” “Oh! YEAH its also big!” “Don’t forget that its big too! Oh wait I already said that!” “OH MY GOODNESS-”

Drive: We have a five motor H-Drive which allows us to align with the posts and score very easily. Our motors are set on speed, so we can drive relatively fast compared to other robots. Also on our drive is a cube aligner, making it easy to intake the cube. No aligning needed! And the situation in which a cube lands on our robot, we have a handy dandy cover that will protect our cortex, making the cubes slide right off. And as an added bonus, our cover has several reminders to turn on air… But we will still write “TURN ON AIR” on our foreheads to ensure that.

Tower/Arm: It is a reverse double six bar that allows us to reach the high goal and five skyrises. The tower has 4 torque internal geared motors and a 1:7 gear ratio, allowing us to pick up two cubes without the lift straining under the weight of the cubes. A straight lift up without any slinkyness is guaranteed with our axle connectors syncing the two sides.

Cube Intake: We have a pneumatic needle intake. It has a two cube capacity. The cubes have a guaranteed straight trip down the scoring pole, because of our handy dandy cube aligner. It is very easy to intake cubes and to score cubes. Just by lowering the arm onto a cube, driving to the post, lifting the arm, and pressing a button, there is 2-5 points our alliance’s bag. Our intake also has a pig attached to it, so it looks like it is flapping its wings every time we intake and outtake. :smiley:

THY PORTABLE SKYRISE INTAKE: If our alliance can only do cubes, we can put on our skyrise intake. It flips out in the beginning of the match. We have a skyrise aligner that helps us aim the skyrise in. And I just noticed that I haven’t even described the intake yet. It is a pneumatic claw attached to the back of our arm. Ask me if you need further explanation.

Programing: We have a 5 point cube autonomous. We are currently aiming to get more since we are not using the amount of time we have to the fullest potential.

So that basically wraps things up! I may have to edit some parts if I completely forgot something. And since the month of April is basically our “Ketchup because of Procrastination” month, we will be making TONS of improvements to our robot. SO YEAAH!

Here is our REVEAL (it basically sums things up in 3 minutes.): Skyrise Reveal - YouTube

YUP! That’s all.

~243A

(We have only used 9 out of the 10 motors. Any ideas?)

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flag spinner

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You could possibly add an extra motor to the strafe wheel on the H-Drive.

However, only consider this if it’s a quick addition. Autonomous is VERY important to work on for worlds.

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Yes, I agree with Cameron, a 1 motor flag spinner is essential to your success.

Nice job guys, definite improvement over when we last saw you (Washington VRC Championships). Good luck at Worlds!

5

Excellent robot! One tip for worlds: Improve your autonomous !!! This robot has amazing potential!

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Thank you for inspiring us. It is greatly appreciated. :smiley:
Video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kzVRvMyX0Io

Thanks! :slight_smile:

Yes! We are working on the autonomous right now. Hopefully we can score 9 points by the end of the day. Thank you for your advice! :slight_smile:

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Catapult, you need one to be even remotely competitive at worlds.

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i like how you guys balanced your lift, with … nothing!! that actually impresses me how little cross bracing or that encoders/potentiometers are non existent on your lift, it took me till February to balance my lift and yet you guys some how engineered a balanced robot. props to you guys!:smiley:

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I agree :smiley:

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Yeah, at the Washington championships your lift was kind of tippy

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I would put some bracing on the lower stage of the lift. I can’t see any reason why you couldn’t put some without it interfering. It will help immensely with the wobbling and tilting, and make autonomous more consistent.

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That is the smartest idea I have heard in a while.

shudders those olden days. A bunch of our rubber bands were snapping during our matches and our wiring was going all over the place. Ergh. But now that all our rubber bands are precisely tuned, the arm does not tip anymore!

We also had a slightly heavier version of our skyrise claw which made our robot top heavy. Top heavy=tippy tippy.
Before, the heavy skyrise claw was the reason it was so difficult to aim our cubes and caused us to tip over one match (unfortunately, right onto our alliance’s half-built Skyrise tower, RIP). Not realizing the problem at the time, we resorted to only scoring one cube at a time, which was…not ideal. After arriving back home, we started experimenting with the lift and crossbracing, as some of you have mentioned here, to no avail. Eventually we realized that the problem was with the weight distribution from top to bottom. But we recently made a lighter one which by far works much better.

Thanks! We ran and connected long axles along the top and bottom one gears and one through the one of the seven gears. It helped a lot!

We took a stab at potentiometers before (and when I say before, I mean REALLY before, when this RD6B was a RD4B) but we wanted to get all the physical stuff first. Since then, we just… Eh. I dunno what happened. :rolleyes:

Thanks for the feedback! We will take this into consideration.

13

Use 10th motor for high-hang mechanism off of skyrise for style-points. ez (don’t worry about the game objects not counting for being touched, the style points will more than make up for it)

14

Haha it’s like we are going back in time to Toss up.:smiley: #Flashback