FIRST Robotics 2020 - Digging In

Two weeks from now we will be competing in Duluth.  This is a sobering thought.  As we started this "home stretch" week we had a lot of things that sometimes worked.  We also had three pounds to lose to get under 125. Oh, and the need for at least another pound of structural support to hold the robot together.

Some odd and interesting views of the week.

Our conveyor system uses loops of surgical tubing.  You have to seal these loops.  Ideally you can do this without dismantling the whole robot.  Experiments eventually led to this solution.  Inside the tubing you put a small section of plastic pneumatic tubing.  If you melt the ends of these little bits and snug them tight with floral wire it is pretty strong even without glue.  Here's some students holding tubing over a heat gun to make these connectors.  It reminds me of marshmellows over a camp fire.

I'm always being asked for odd parts.  Sometimes I have to look in seldom frequented desk drawers.  I'm not sure what is in the box marked Problem Child but I figure it might not be a part we want to use.

Sometimes our pit set up is scatterbrained and we forget parts at home.  Not this year.  We have visitors coming in the next few days so we set the pit up at the top of the stairs so it is the first thing that is seen.  Looks nice.

This is about the maximum number you can productively squeeze around the robot.

Weight at end of day Tuesday was 124, albeit with a smidgen still needed for frame.  And some issues with the pneumatics to solve.  Hopefully our air capacity at about one gallon will suffice with careful management.

A bunch of other things happened in our Thursday session.  About 35 visitors wandered through.  We crashed the robot and broke a weld.  We, oh that's not fair I was not involved at all, a student figured out the vexing issue with our pneumatics system.  The new design pit cart doors were installed and illuminated.  A backup bar grabbing device was prototyped.

Of course I was too busy to take any pictures.  I'll do better on Saturday.