As team 5854B is posting videos of the first Georgia skyrise tournament, I thought I might drop the links here:
For more check out their Youtube channel. I am using nook and I don’t know why I can’t pull up the other link…
Team 5854B is the elimination partner of us, 3921B, with one of the best skyrise building robots of the entire tournament. As a matter of fact, the video posted above is the qualifier in which we went against 5854B and is the only match we lost in qualification. As the video is online, I’ll just confess that the scissor that went up is our robot. It usually doesn’t wobble the way it first appeared… i was the lift driver and I messed it up at that time.
Basically you can see that even the top ranking teams have a lot to improve. 5854B definitely needs an autonomous. And as you can see, our driver needs more practice. We are improving our scissor now, aiming at a capacity of three cubes and skyrise building ability.
I’ve watched the video and reviewed some of the results from the FCHS tournament and let me just start by saying congratulations on Design Award as well as Excellence. Being from Georgia, it’s good to know the competition is getting heated up. Our first competition is Nov. 14 in Jekyll and we hope to see most of these teams there. However, being a TSA conference competition, I do realize that some teams won’t be in attendance.
In regards to your robot, I really like your scissor lift design. Believe it or not, my robot looks incredibly similar(I’ll try and post some pics later). Have you encountered any issues with your scissor arms being made of flat bar? Also, could you elaborate on your design and some common designs at the competition since we only got one video to see.
Anyways, good luck this season and I hope to see you at all the GA competitions!
Thanks for posting this. We’re actually making some pretty big changes, a lot more than just autonomous. It was great being on an alliance with you guys. Are you guys planning on going to the FLC competition?
Vikings:
Thanks for your kind words. I guess you guys re-utilized your N team’s world robot right? Or you possibly rebuilt one. Actually our lift is not quite uncommon. Google team 8192 and you can see their gateway robot has a similar design.
For the structure strength, i have to confess that I haven’t at all experienced the deficiencies I predicted, which is the metal bars bending sideways despite standoff support. They seem to handle the stress well. However slight bendiness is observed at the bottom stage where the gears block the support. The unexpected issue is at the connection where we connect 25 hole and 10 hole bars to create 35 hole bars. Although we used all nylock nuts, the connection seems to bend under the huge amount of elastic assist. We are currently re-constructing the lift to resolve these issues.
Because our robot is basically taken apart now, we do not plan to do a picture reveal soon… probably we will do a detailed reveal after a few tournaments, when we perfect this robot and start working on another one.
5854B:
We would love to, but we are currently not in TSA. We are trying to get in, so very possibly. But don’t worry we have 8 more qualifiers scheduled ahead of us, and most of them are around cumming. Should see you guys a lot!
Plus, I guess you guys probably added side roller cube intake and became a lot tougher…
Interestingly enough, our world’s robot is still together. We have built completely new robots. We have two nearly finished(383V and 383N). And also have a third in the makings. What tournaments are you currently registered for? If possible, you should definitely attend the tournament at our highscool in Valdosta, GA. It’s a long ride for you but it’s definitely worth it. It has always been a high quality tournament with many high competitors.
Your robot sounds pretty cool. I’m on a one man team and so far I’ve built my scissor out of c-channel, but hearing about yours definitely provokes thought. I also plan on doing a reveal after a while. No point this early in the season. You can look on Instagram and see a few pics of our robotics program. My username is Weisul
Yeah I really wish we could go to Valdosta and Costal empire. But it is a little bit far. I’ll talk to my instructor and we possibly have a chance of going. But I am pretty sure we will see your team at state championship this year.
One little hint about scissors: my practical experience tells me that a 4 motor 1:7 three stage full legnth scissor lift cannot lift up more than one cube with excess elastic assist. Or maybe I really need aluminum… we are all steel right now.
Or… maybe we can try to make this as a challenge. Without aluminum, how far can a team go? Right now we are gearing down the lift and hoping to get a capacity of 3. Not quite possible to get the 4 cube capacity and speed like 1492X, but we should be decent.
Last year, my team was able to qualify for worlds with a completely steel robot. (The only aluminum we had was about a 6 hole long angle) I still don’t know how we did it…
We know a few teams that are really good and are limited to mostly steel, too. It’s quite impressive; I think our aluminum robots are heavy. If you can afford it, aluminum makes it easier.
Our robot is forced under 20 lbs, basically the limit of a 1.6 speed drive. I guess our robot would have easily exceeded 30 lbs if we thoughtlessly slammed 35 hole c channels as structures. During my summer design session, my goal was basically like, less material, less material… Which is why our slides are our chassis structure.
This seems like it may inhibit Building out more and limits the amount of protection the sides are providing? I may just be picturing it inaccurately though.
Working under constraints is sometimes not that bad. It taught us to be more considerate when designing. Every structure piece on our robot is carefully chosen to have theoretically the best strength-weight ratio. Maybe designing is easier with pure aluminum, but you can still play VEX with steel and a little bit more thinking.
Not for the last tournament, but right now my teammate is working on a longer claw than the claw kit for skyrise. The standard claw is still a little small for skyrise sections. We want it to be something folded down prior to a match. After match starts it springs out of the robot’s 18 inch cube, giving the driver less trouble. Because we basically stuffed every available cubic inch with structure… this claw probably will be used for descoring also.
We prefer a 1 motor claw over pneumatics, because 2 more tanks probably means tripping the base PTC with two cubes in possession.
We have a 4 high speed motor direct mecanum drive.
Because we didn’t have mecanum wheels when we were designing, we used a high traction wheel to model. That’s why I asked for mecanum in inventor a while ago.
Two motor is not likely… our bot is solid 20 lbs of steel.
