BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 10219
Batteries Not Included portfolio Generation 2
Generation 1 Page 1 of 15
Generation 3
BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 10219
Our team is made of ten high schoolers who have actively taken part in the STEM community for two years (Batteries Not Included has existed since 2016). We meet three times a week to discuss our passions and brainstorm innovations that could change the future. Our robot differentiates itself from other teams in two primary two ways. First is our wobble goal arm. It is unique because of its special triangle clamp design that allows for a greater surface area while grabbing the wobble goal. It is run by one GoBilda Torque servo and a motor on a worm gear. Because of this original design, we immediately had a perfect wobble goal autonomous and also got at least 1 wobble goal over the wall during End Game at all matches at every competition. Our chassis is operated by GoBilda 13.7 motors at 435 RPM which are controlled by belts. It has 4 side plates that are made with airplane grade aluminum that was cut by our CNC machine. Because of this, the chassis is extremely fast and durable; it can survive any collision with the wall or other robots. It is also faster and more agile than most of the other robots. Our wobble goal and chassis give us the edge over the competition.
Builders Programmers
Patrick, Thomas, Gavin, Christian Kush, Josh
CAD/CNC
Patrick, Thomas, Ben, Eva
Outreach
Madison, Andrew
Website
Christian
Notebook Coaches/Mentor
Eva (formatting), the Entire Team (writing) DuVal, Acker, Burba, Meadows, Shafer Page 2 of 15
BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 10219
Think/Connect Math & Science
Using science and technology allows us to be more efficient in our building. We use Fusion 360 to “CAD out" our ideas. This allows us to fully visualize our ideas before building them, which can be a massive time saver and allow for a more accurate and speedier build. We also use math as a way to help us design and build our robot and when doing autonomous to allow us to understand what is the best way to use our time and what path would be best. One of our mentors is a physics teacher who is an important asset for building especially this year. Since this year’s challenge is all about launching, he has shared his knowledge and knowhow on what designs would be best for our launcher that would maximize accuracy and speed while minimizing drag. We also use science and technology during competitions. We have a very effective scouting program that collects a trove of data. This data is then analyzed by us to allow us to understand what teams would help us the best during competition playoffs. We also use the principles of statistics to understand our performance overtime. We have created multiple charts graphing our scores and results. This helps us understand what goals we should be aiming for every competition and match. Batteries Not Included uses a number of calculations to help improve robot performance. So far this year, we have calculated the optimal angle for our launcher mechanism by first building the launcher mechanism, and then tested it at various angles using a protractor. The angle that launched the rings most consistently was 30 degrees, so that is our launcher angle. We have also calculated the spacing between the side panels on our chassis. This was done by measuring the needed chassis parts, and we were able to calculate the dimensions from there. We also calculated the spacing on the belts of the drive-train, and what sized belts we needed to use.
Analytics
Analytics are a major part of our game strategy. This season, we have a lot more data resources than any other years previous. This is because so many of our competitions are online and this gives us access to scores and data trends that we can. We track our scores every single competition. We track our total scores, our auto scores, our TeleOp scores, and our end game scores. This is extremely helpful because it helps us understand our progress and it helps us understand what we need to improve on. For example, the graph to the right depicts the TeleOp and Endgame scores combined of Remote Meets 1 and 2. Points scored are on the y-axis and the matches are on the x-axis.
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BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 10219 Design Process and current robot
Reference pages 5-4 to 5-7 in our notebook for more photos.
For the past few years, our team has developed a comprehensive “generations” strategy to seamlessly implement continuous changes our robots has gone through. One of BNI’s traits is continuous iterations of all mechanisms. Within these generations, each mechanism goes through iterations. Generation 1 started when we first began to brainstorm ideas for our robot and ended on November 21st. Generation 2 then began and ended on December 9th. Generation 3 started on December 10th and will end after the League Tournament; thus, it is our current robot design.
WOBBLE GOAL ARM Generation 1: The wobble goal arm is a mechanism that is designed to grab the wobble goal during autonomous and TeleOp. Our first iteration was an elevated arm that could grab the tip of the wobble goal. Then we decided to create a more efficient and reliable arm by extending the arm and adding a ramp. Our arm has two GoBILDA servos; one for grabbing and one for raising or lowering. The grabbing servo is attached to two clamps. These clamps are from a PVC pipe that was split in half and lined with rubber. They are designed to grab onto the wobble goal’s pole and to allow for a secure grip while being moved. Generation 2: In our 2nd Generation Wobble arm, we swapped out our wobble arm claw with a more reliable design. We have moved away from our previous design because we have determined that the PVC pipe claw does not grab onto the wobble goal tightly enough. We started work on a complete redesign of the claw. We have incorporated 4 REV rails in a ‘V’ shape, and one more rail to enclose the wobble goal and create a triangle around the wobble goal. We also have added an automated stopping mechanism to prevent our wobble arm from retracting back into the robot too far after Autonomous. To help with determining the position of our arm, we added a color sensor that detects red and blue tape placed onto the sides of the arm. When the sensor detects red, the arm is down. When it detects blue, the arm is up. We have replaced the servo with a motor because the servo was struggling to lift the weight of the arm and the wobble goal. We also relocated the pivot point of the arm to a higher position so that it could reach over the field wall without having to push the robot against the wall. Generation 3: With Our Generation 3 Wobble Goal Arm, we changed a servo to a worm gear with a motor to make it more stable. We also made the arm longer so we can easily get over the wall. For our grabber, it is the same as Generation 2 where we would
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BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 10219 trap the wobble goal in a ‘V’ and close the ‘V’ with the wobble goal inside. The color sensor has been moved to allow for more precision.
INTAKE Generation 1: In this year’s challenge, being able to intake the rings quickly and efficiently is a crucial part of being able to score consistently. The intake is one of the most important parts of our robot and is designed to be reliable and efficient. Our first generation consisted of three columns of compliant wheels organized in three separate rows. Our first-generation intake also pivoted at the back wheels on the top of the ramp, so the other wheels were able to rotate up to better intake the rings. The main problem with this generation was the fact that we had to push the ring to the wall to be able to intake it, which is something that we aimed to fix for our second-generation intake. Our second first-generation intake consisted of 4 rows of compliant wheels in three separate columns which are responsible for bringing the rings to the launcher. We added a 2-wheel row to the front that flips down during gameplay to better grip the rings. The fourth row only has 2 compliant wheels and is used to bring in rings that are on the ground. Our intake is powered by a NeveRest 3.7 motor, and driven by plastic chain. We also have a red ramp underneath the intake to help guide the rings up to our launcher. Generation 2: Our second-generation intake was composed of 5 rows of different amounts of compliant wheels. This intake is driven by a NeveRest 20 motor on the right side of the robot, and is connected to the actual intake mechanism by plastic chain. We have metal bars on the relocated ramp of the intake to help guide the rings into the correct position. The goal of this design and generation was to be more reliable at actually intaking the rings, as well as being able to move the rings accurately to our new and improved launching mechanism. Our first iteration of our generation 2 intake had two main problems: getting the
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BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 10219 rings from the first layer of wheels onto the ramp and redirecting the rings into the magazine for the launcher. The second iteration of our Generation 2 intake contains the same set of compliant wheels, except this time they are on the bottom of the rings with a clear, plexiglass roof on the top. We also have a flexible front row of compliant wheels that intake the ring from above, and possess the ring as the other wheels spin the other direction allowing the rings to be easily elevated from the ground and into the robot. Generation 3: However, the rings were not coming in properly, so we added belts. We now have a set of belts on the bottom of the rings, as well as the top. We also have a flexible front row of compliant wheels and belts that intake the ring from above and move it into the two sets of belts, allowing the rings to be easily elevated from the ground and into the robot. We do this all with one motor utilizing chain to rotate our intake pulleys. Our intake still feeds directly into our launcher’s ring storage, and we can still intake and hold three rings at a time.
LAUNCHER Generation 1: Our launching mechanism was one of the last mechanisms to be developed and integrated onto our robot. From the very beginning, we knew that we were going to use a flywheel launcher design. In our original brainstorming, we discussed a double-flywheel design that sandwiched the ring above and below, but we soon realized that we needed to ring to rotate for accurate launching. Our first prototypes involved a stealth wheel that touched the ring from the side, using a wall to squeeze the ring and leverage it into the launch. This basic concept has been carried all the way to our current iteration. We experimented with several ways to push the ring into the flywheel, from using a rack-and-pinon to a servo arm.
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BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 10219 For these first few competitions, we decided to move the ring directly from the intake to the flywheel. The launcher also has a roof to guide the aim and prevent the rings from leaving the launcher. Additionally, we have employed the speed of a 6,000 RPM 1:1 GoBilda motor to drive the flywheel for maximum possible launching range (not launched over the 16-foot max). Despite these beneficial aspects, our current launcher does have drawbacks such as inaccuracy and an inability to launch more than one ring at a time. We are currently planning on a new and improved launcher to solve these problems. This design will consist of a ‘U’shaped path of travel for the ring allowing it maximum amount of contact time with the flywheel. Additionally, rings will have the ability to stack in a 3-ring “magazine,” allowing us to launch 3 rings at a time. A servo arm will push these rings into the launcher. Generation 2: For competition 3, we finally had the opportunity to design and build a competitive launcher. In the past two competitions, we had used a launcher that was simple. The previous launcher was not accurate, could not shoot more than one ring, and could not launch into the high goal. Our new launcher improved on the first two flaws of the old launcher. We designed a magazine that could hold three rings at a time, and a servo arm that would push the ring at the bottom of the stack into the flywheel. In this way, the robot could store three rings and launch all three of them in quick succession. Secondly, we designed our launcher to make the rings would travel in a curved path around the wheel. This allowed the flywheel to be in contact with the ring for a longer period of time, allowing the rings to exit the launcher faster than the previous design. Additionally, the structure of the curve and the fact that its parts were 3D printed allowed the rings to shoot more accurately from the launcher and hit targets consistently. There was still one flaw in the new launcher. We could still not hit the high goal. This was because of how we mounted the flywheel motor. Due to sizing constraints, we needed to mount the motor at an angle with a bevel gear. The gear ratio caused our speed to be cut in half. We plan to fix this by re-mounting the motor at the same angle as the flywheel to double the speed. We also plan to add another identical motor to the flywheel in order to double the torque of the wheel but maintain the faster speed. Generation 3: Our generation 2 launcher was a complete overhaul compared to the generation 1 launcher, introducing many drastic design changes that would extremely improve launching. However, while we gained increased ring
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BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 10219 capacity and improved precision, the true potential of the new launcher design was hindered by the single-motor that drove the flywheel. The generation 2 launcher did not have enough speed to launch rings into the high goal. After generation 2, we thought that directly driving the motor to the flywheel and adding an additional second motor of the same time would fix our problem. For generation 3 we had two GoBilda 6,000 RPM motors, doubled the speed of the flywheel compared to last generation while maintaining the same torque. With this, we could score rings in the high goal and, after replacing damaged siding, we could do it accurately. This greatly increased our score capacity and allowed us to consider our robot high-performance!
CHASSIS/DRIVETRAIN This year, we manufactured our chassis out of airplane grade aluminum. Different than we have in years past, we designed our side plates in the 3D design software Fusion360. We improved our design from last year, as we shortened our side plates and lowered them closer to the ground in order to prevent our robot from driving over any field elements. Similar to last year, we cut our side plates using our CNC machine, so that we have appropriate spacing for our drivetrain. Our drivetrain consists of a deadaxle GoBilda mecanum wheel drivetrain with 13.7 GoBilda motors. We switched to dead-axle this year because it can help with Autonomous accuracy and smoother driving, and allows us more space on the inside of the robot in-between our two inner side plates. We also switched over to belts this year, as they provide a tighter and more efficient way of linking our motors to our wheels. We started with belts at the beginning of the season, but they were loose enough to cause issues in autonomous. Now, we have tensioners to our belts in order to create equal tensions throughout each motor-to-wheel system.
Lessons Learned (Outreach)
Experiences
Lessons Learned
We have the problem of reaching out to other communities while still being COVID friendly.
We have learned that you don’t need to be in-person to reach out to other communities we have been able to do virtual presentations with other schools and made it interactive. We also were able to a food drive and mask donations to help the community during the beginning of COVID.
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BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 10219 COVID interferes with shipping times, which causes delays. This can make us get behind schedule.
We learned to have everything planned and order all at once to get all the items to arrive and we learned to use our time wisely while waiting.
We have a senior who has been the head of outreach for the past two years and will be leaving the team after graduation.
She has made it a priority to pass on her knowledge to the next team member so he can seamlessly continue BNI’s efforts to bring STEM and FIRST principles to our surrounding community and beyond within our new virtual environment.
Team Plans We plan to reach out to Schenck School where we can engage in virtual and interactive meetings. We also are creating a candy machine claw to go outside our building and attract people to Robotics. We have rebuilt our chassis to be more maneuverable and plan to make add an interchangeable base for each easy switch with each design. We also are doing a design contest with the students from our school who will submit their design for us to build for an event. We will pick one or combine ideas from some of them and create and present the build to the school. Also, we have created these mechanisms in the following order: our main Outreach bot for any event, a slingshot, and a Boxclaw (like those in arcades).
SUSTAINABILITY Our team created a funnel of students interested in FIRST and robotics to help sustain us for years to come. Here is a flow chart depicting the five teams at our school. Fifth Grade EagleBots
STEM Gems (FLL) BotForce (FLL)
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Fix-Its (8th Grade FTC Club)
Batteries Not Included (HS FTC)
BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 10219 I
STRATEGIC
Auto(nomous): Acknowledging both of our programmers lacked exposure to coding, we had to primarily focus on teaching them Java (Android Studio as the IDE) before starting Auto or Driver-Controlled programming. To maximize practice time, they were simultaneously taught how to create and implement Auto pathing(s) that would: obtain the highest point count consistently with fast-moving GoBilda Mecanum Wheels, complete as many missions as possible in the allotted 30 seconds, and deposit the robot into optimal position for TeleOp. Driver-Controller “TeleOp”: We put three rings into our launcher at the beginning that launch during Auto, then the human player distributes more for TeleOp. We then intake rings and launch with our left front wheel positioned a few inches behind the (white) launch line and in the blue “A” box. If we did not score both wobble goals in Auto, we will take the missed one(s) over. Right before End Game, we will pick up one wobble goal but stay in the “no-launch zone.” End Game: During the last 30 seconds of the match, we immediately go deliver the wobble goals one-at-a-time over the wall. Then, we continue launching, and go for the power shots if we have 10 or more seconds left.
Development of skills Internal Development: We all are able to pick and choose what aspect of Robotics we “specialize” in on Batteries Not Included. As a team, we have spilt up into smaller “sub-teams,” which each specialize in an individual aspect of robotics. These are detailed on page two. Because our building only has two rooms, these teams are constantly around each other. Thus, we had to divide the rooms into sections for each “sub-team." For example, the Programming team has a row of tables equipped with monitors and space to place the robot. However, we also all want to grow together as a team; thus, we teach each other our talents. For example, the building team has frequently taught other students how to solder, many people not part of the CAD team know Fusion 360, and everyone works on writing the Engineering Portfolio (and the Notebook). Over the season, we, as a team, have developed our robot and split these developments into Generations, as detailed in past sections. External Development: On the outside, the Clay Targets and Robotics teams may look like a team where people shoot shotguns at tiny orange discs and a team where people build and program robots to succeed in competition, respectively. However, there are definitely some similarities between the two. In order to shoot well, you have to be extremely focused on both timing and form. Because of Clay Targets, students are more focused at Robotics and as a result, accomplish much more, as well as finish things on time. A second thing that they show is how to be a good teammate. At Clay Targets, if you are at a meet, and you miss a shot, it is not uncommon for a member of an opposing team to come over and give you advice. This is also true of Robotics; it is quite common for older teams to help out younger
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BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 10219 teams by giving them advice and explaining different building techniques. It also works the other way with younger teams helping older teams. FTC Development: We also have stayed in contact with Milton High School’s FTC Team, Eagle Robotics, and even got together to scrimmage once! All season we have only practiced on a half field with only our competition robot. Today we learned how it works with more than one robot on the field at a time, it is very chaotic and we had to learn how to work with a team for this year’s challenge and how strategizing might work. We also learned how they are able to be so accurate with high goals and how their autonomous is so consistent. We learned some of their autonomous strategies as well as their use of odometry on the field. We learned their launching mechanism and how it can be very effective during meets and competitions.
Mentors
FROM US (Madison) Along with our outreach events, we also offer Mentoring at our Lower and Middle campus. Madison mentors the middle school FLL teams STEM Gems and BotForce. She also mentors the FTC Club Fix-Its, an eighth-grade team who learns about FTC as a precursor to the high school robotics team. Madison uses the knowledge she has gained through her two years of FLL and four years of FTC experience to help teach and guide the middle schoolers about robotics. She has helped them with terminology, techniques, and mechanisms.
TO US (Shafer and Meadows)
We have many adult mentors who help us build and compete better. One of our most important mentors is Mr. Shafer, a former builder and driver who graduated in 2019. He mentors us by providing building advice on what materials to use and which mechanisms work best. During competitions, he also gives advice to our drivers on how to handle themselves under pressure. Mr. Shafer is a reliable source when it comes to robotics. He is always there to answer a question and to give guidance to our team. Mr. Meadows has been involved in helping us with the physics of the launcher. He has helped us calculate the angle required to get the maximum launching height to score into the high goal through calculations with drawing out the parabola and identify the maximum height while including the launch zone distance. He has also helped programming problems with motor speed and solve a calculus algorithm involving the variation of speed. He helped us troubleshoot normalizing the RPM of motors during Autonomous. Mr. Meadows has been very helpful and taught us a lot about physics throughout the Robotics season. We cannot wait to learn more as the season goes on.
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BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 10219 Stem Communication After the League Tournament, we have plans to contact Sgt. Zachary Cianca, who is a part of the US Army Corps of Engineers (with the 5th Engineer Battalion Soldiers out of Fort Leonard Wood). We look forward to hearing from him about STEM opportunities and applications within the military. We have presented our robots multiple times in the past in front of the County Commissioners. This year, Senator Kay Kirkpatrick (of GA) came to award us with recognition for winning at State for three consecutive years on October 12th. She informed us about what she did to better our community in the Senate, and we introduced her to FIRST and Robotics. We presented the mechanics of our past season’s robot and how they worked reliably on the field.
Control
Submission Submitted separately
Reference pages 6-3 to 6-4 in our notebook for the Development Process. Programming highlights
We programmed the competition robot to pick up and score the wobble goal using the wobble arm mechanism into its respective squares depending on the number of rings it detects with the camera. For the first remote meet in autonomous, we did this process of having the wobble goal in the robot’s possession before initializing and scoring into one of the squares. To do this, we would have the robot doing a ‘driveGyroBackward’ program instead of just a ‘driveBackward’ to be more accurate; the “gyro” part helps to keep the robot heading accurate. Then, it would strafe left to drop the wobble goal and park afterwards. However, for the second remote meet we programmed the competition robot to grab both wobble goals and set it in their respective square depending on how many rings there are for the robot to detect. To accomplish this, we kept the same code we had to score the first wobble but added on to it by strafing farther to the left, driving forward (because the robot starts in a backwards position before autonomous starts), picking up the wobble goal, and placing it into one of the squares. Eventually, we will start programming the robot to score the powershots as well as scoring one or both wobble goals. A change we made in autonomous for the December meet was launching three rings into the mid-goal as well as having different paths. This was a significant change compared to the previous meet because we were not able to launch the rings during autonomous and this gave us an opportunity to earn more points through launching. We also chose to start the autonomous runs on the right side of the blue field instead of the left because it would ultimately prove to be more convenient for launching and scoring the wobble goal. Contrary to our initial autonomous goal for the December meet which was to score both wobble goals and launch all three rings, we could only score one wobble goal and launch the
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BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 10219 rings because we had yet to think of a strategic path for the robot to grab the second wobble as well as have enough time to grab it. The improved wobble arm mechanism also proved to be much more stable, secure, and reliable than the previous generation’s wobble arm mechanism in autonomous because sometimes the wobble goal would slip out of the arm or the robot may miss it entirely due to the design of the arm. We also incorporated the use of angles and rotations in the second generation robot which saved much more time than strafing and moving backwards or forwards.
CAMERA We use a web camera utilizing Easy Open CV to detect the amount of rings, instead of a sensor. It can detect thresholds depending on what color it hovers over. After it detects one of the three options, it goes to a different case which consists of different code. A threshold of 0 - 127 means there are no rings. If the threshold is 127 - 140, there is 1 ring, and, if it is 140 or more, there are 4 rings.
Motivate
Covers more content about our goals
Our ability to hold and participate in events was greatly limited by COVID, so we decided to throw all our efforts into building new and reevaluating old Outreach mechanisms. We have gotten closer to accomplishing our goal of finishing the box claw, and we have begun a new outreach bot that will offer better performance in steering and speed. Also, we took our existing trebuchet and turned it into a slingshot so we could control the range, trajectory, and velocity of our projectile better. Outreach has been prosperous!
Team Organization & Goals Each team member is important because they bring a new perspective to any problem. Underclassmen (Christian, Andrew, Josh, Ben, and Eva) have less experience in STEM; therefore, they usually pose easier possibilities. The Senior members of Batteries Not Included (Patrick, Gavin, Thomas, Madison, and Kush) then can build off of these ideas and create a reliable and easy-to-build robot! Also, Eva leads the Engineering Notebook organization and Christian manages the website and score analytics of our team. Ben has created most of our 3D prints and continues to come up with custom CAD-ed ideas to solve problems! Each Senior also contributes something to the team because they are individually talented at a specific aspect of engineering. This year, each Senior builder had a primary mechanism to work on (with help from the underclassmen): Patrick has the launcher, Gavin has the intake, and Thomas has the wobble goal arm. The other two Seniors, Madison and Kush, oversee Outreach and Programming, respectively. They are training Andrew (in Outreach) and Josh (in Programming) to ensure our team preforms well next year. The aforementioned website is run by students and spreads the word of Batteries Not Included and our accomplishments. We also utilize Instagram, Twitch,
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BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 10219 and YouTube to stay connected to the FTC and FIRST communities. In the future, we hope to expand our website to include an interactive version of our Engineering Notebook. In addition to marketing on the Internet, we make small 3D prints related to our team and the FTC Challenge to give out at traditional meets and throughout our local community. We have a budget of $48,875 from student fees, season and corporate sponsors, and our school’s annual fund. We group our expenses in six sections: coach stipends, robot and parts, tools, fees, facilities, and marketing. Throughout the season, we track our expenses and income through Google Sheets, and we had spent less than half of our budget by January! Due to this tracking, we still have enough left to support the rest of the 2020-2021 season! For the most part this year, we have been building new robots and took the opportunity to reflect on our previous successes and failures. From these observations, we concluded that at the beginning of this year the number of events we could host and participate in would be quite small (or nonexistent). So we turned our attention to creating a foundation from which we could build. We want to perfect the mechanisms we have been working on so that, in our future, we have things to do and a basis from which to build. Once these are complete, our plans are to focus on virtual events. Right now, we are in the process of seeing if we can set up a design contest in which we let young engineers in the surrounding community have the opportunity to design their own mechanism and see it come to life. We want the community to become an integral part of our team and open the door for young engineers to learn, grow and become passionate about robotics. We are now brainstorming ideas so we can spread our experience in STEM to those who have a passion for it.
Design
Digital Engineering BNI utilizes various digital software applications to create custom pieces for purposes including Outreach, the Competition, and Merchandise. Our CAD (Computer Aided Design) and CNC (Computer Numerical Control) team works
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BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 10219 tirelessly using a Shapeoko 3XXL CNC machine, Original Prussa i3 MK3S, and many other applications including Fusion 360.
CAD/CNC
Our team uses Fusion 360 as our CAD design software for our robot, our CNC projects, and our 3D printed parts. In the past, we have designed custom robot battery holders, game element sorters, and wheel guards. We have used Fusion 360 this year to make our entire launching system. We made guiderails for our rings to be launched consistently, and have designed and 3D printed our ring depository. We also modeled our baseplate of our launcher to be a perfect fit onto our launching mechanism. We used Fusion 360 to model our chassis side-plates. We designed them in Fusion 360, then ported the design into our CNC software to cut them out of aluminum. We also used CAD to design our belt pulleys on or wheels to ensure that the belts were tight against our drivetrain. In addition to these belts, we have made six intake brackets that hold the axles in place for the intake and a plexiglass foundation for our launcher.
3D PRINTING When designing 3D parts, we also use Fusion 360. Then, we export them to a slicing software called Prusa Slicer. This software takes our STL, cuts it into layers, and translates it to G-code. This allows our Prusa i3 MK3S to read the STL and know where to print which layers. Our team uses 3D printing constantly; it is a crucial to the design of our robot and allows our team to think outside of the box and use custom designs. Our team uses 3D printing to design better mechanisms so we do not have to rely on premade parts. This also cuts down on cost because the parts we need are often expensive to buy and ship. Even though we have to pay for filament, most of the time one roll of filament is less than the cost of parts we need, and it can be used for other projects as well. We utilize custom 3D prints to accomplish specific functions. For example, the walls on our launcher are all 3D printed to perfectly fit a ring to an efficient and reliable launcher. This made it so launching the rings was more accurate and reliable. We also made pulleys for our drivetrain!
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