Hey,
Our team 663X is going to state and we are a first year 6th grade team. We have done well so far and were wondering if there are any tricks and tips for making state easier. These are the teams we are up against:
https://www.robotevents.com/robot-competitions/vex-robotics-competition/RE-VRC-20-1822.html#teams
Robot doing auton:
Anything would be appreciated.
(Also here is our only approved online platform :p)
a faster flywheel wouldn’t hurt.
Have fun, make new friends, and learn lots!
In my experience adding more rubber bands to increase grip has also decreased my cycle time. I’d also recommend bracing the intakes on the back c channels to give it more structure. Also having a hood that is pulled up instead of down works better in my experience
Practice your skills. Program a decent programming run and make sure you can get a ball in each goal in driver. Will take you a lot farther than trying to change your build.
dont lose
I would recommend making a few changes to the hood, you really want the speed of the top roller to launch the ball, not the hood compression, which is what looks like that is happening. Congrats at states, though. I only wish we were there to see you guys 
Increase the speed of your rollers and brace your antitip wheel with more than one piece of c-channel on the front of the robot
also, in order to increase your roller speed you need to stop forcing the balls into the rollers as hard. Currently the balls have to compress each roller by an inch in order to be fed through the system. You want as little compression on the rollers as possible while still having plenty of grip on the balls being fed through.
-663A
The most important part about going to state is having fun. Don’t worry about the result, just enjoy the experience. If you go to worlds… great, it is a result of your effort. Always remember the second you start worrying about the result, the whole thing gets messed. Like a certain song says…
Don’t worry… about a thing
cause every little thing is gonna be alright.
Here is the link to the song.
It’s not a Rick Roll
This isnt necessarily true. My robot relies on roller compression to function and it works just as well as rollers with little compression. I think it’s a matter of design
this isn’t quite accurate.
the more roller compression you have, the more energy it takes to turn the rollers when they are moving a ball, because of course it takes energy to deform the bands. So in terms of power efficiency, having no compression would be best. however, compression is necessary to grip the balls and conform to the shape of the ball. So there is definitely a sweet spot that will vary from robot to robot.
uh nah this is necessarily true
it’s how energy dissipates in the bands (as xenon said) due to something called hysteresis. minimizing the amount of necessary compression to achieve the same level of grip is quite literally what a large majority of innovation in the tire making industry is all about; you lose insane amounts of energy due to the constant cycles of deformation and rebounding, and to counter this, you need to balance traction and rolling resistance (rolling resistance is used as a catch-all for the viscoelastic forces at play in this example)
I completely agree my robot had major problems because we had to much compression on the balls and once we switched it now all of our rollers are very fast with the slowest being 1200rpms
I worded my response poorly, sorry about that. Yes, balance does absolutely matter and my rollers burn out with too many bands. As a result I use less of them. Since each band presses on the ball harder, I can use less of them to achieve the same balance.
My old response didnt quite convey what i was trying to say lol
this is why you will see “hypermilers” overinflate their tires a bit, while factory standards have lower pressures.
I would say to just work on a 2 goal auto in case your team mate doesn’t have one
Don’t go for 1st
Go for an absolute roll
Win skills, notebook, excellence, and tournament champions and don’t lose a single qualification match.