[CRUSH-build] Preparation for Las Vegas

Tue Mar 14 22:05:38 MST 2006

Bill, 
    I agree that moving the wheels would be a major job and probabaly not even doable at comp. 

  To all Builders,
    We came up with some great ideas today to better the robot without using more than 2 hours of Comp. Thurs., as to allow the programers the rest of the time to prepare the Robot for Autonomous scoring. If we stick to eliminating the Dump, chambering the balls in the hopper, building a wider more robust collector roller, altering the collector channel, shortening the shooter, and getting practice on climbing straight and quickly, proper blocking techniques and evasion of blocking robots along with scoring autonomously our work tasks will be plentyful. The run on sentence is on purpose to elaborate the task at hand. We spent today planning what 
  to do. Thurs. should be how and then to work we must go. 
  If time allows, what would be your thoughts on cutting the four short chains quickly (with a chain cutter), changing the transmission sprockets to larger ones, and placing new chains? 

  To all,
  The Mentors need some rest before Vegas and the students need to do some school work with all the days missed for competition, therefore I don't think that we can plan too much work between now and Vegas. 

                                        See Ya All Thurs,
                                                                   Mike L.

Bill Bennett <bill at wizardofaz.net> wrote:
  I'll campaign hard against moving the wheels. After much trouble keeping 
them in place for even a few minutes of driving, we adjusted them, 
carefully, very tediously, then welded the washers in place to keep the 
axles where they were. So moving the wheels is a relatively big deal, 
especially working through some other welder. And who knows even if there 
will be a welder in LV (maybe there will be, I just don't know).

Anyway, I don't think the frame or bumber hitting was the issue. At least 
once it was weak battery (the time we idled for about 20 minutes waiting for 
the field system to get working). Several times it was just the difficulty 
of driving straight up. We're not great on the ramp, it takes near perfect 
driving to do it.

If autonomous scoring is at or near the top of the list, then we for sure 
have to allocate significant time to developing and testing that fuction on 
the practice day. This precludes doing much else to the hardware that would 
use up that time. We can also do a careful assessment of why ramp climbing 
is so hard, and maybe do something about it if there's an easy idea. We have 
a lot of video, maybe viewing that will be helpful.

Brian, if your rank 1 to 4 is correct, we shouldn't do anything to the 
collector system on Thursday until the last thing of the day, and I predict 
that will mean we don't do it at all. We can remake the collector roller 
here (I brought it home), and remount it quickly. I think it will be 
lighter - I'll use the ABS idea I saw on another robot instead of the 
aluminum - and a bigger shaft that can take a beating.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brian" 
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 12:48 PM
Subject: Re: [CRUSH-build] Preparation for Las Vegas

>I think the four biggest goals for Las Vegas need to be:
>
> 1) Score in autonomous
> 2) Add a track to the basket so it doesn't jam
> 3) Fix the problem of not getting on the ramp
> 4) Get the ball sweeper working
>
> Most of the discussion so far has been on the ball sweeper, but as much as 
> I would love to see a working one, I think the other three goals are much 
> more important. Looking back at the AZ regional, we saw that the teams 
> scoring in autonomous and getting on the ramp had a serious advantage over 
> the teams that couldn't.
>
> 1) From what I am told the autonomous should work, although it has never 
> been tested. This would be a good thing to test on the practice robot, and 
> then the real robot on Thursday of competition. Also, if we do happen to 
> have a working ball sweeper we could be an auto-dumper instead of an 
> auto-shooter (which might or might not be easier to program).
>
> 2) I think we all agree this fix is trivial, but will somehow prove to 
> have some difficulties. I am confident something will be figured out 
> though.
>
> 3) It seemed to me that our problem getting on the ramp was that our frame 
> was preventing our first wheel from reaching the ramp. I wonder if we 
> could fix this by lowering the wheels a little. This may not be possible, 
> and may also make us a little more top heavy. Any thoughts here?
>
> 4) Although option 2 discussed earlier *may* be easier, I am still leaning 
> towards option 3 because it would allow us to have the best of both 
> worlds; we could load balls into our basket, but still be able to score in 
> the low goal. We have two five hour fix it windows to make any upgrade 
> part we may need, and I don't think we need to make that many for the 
> conveyor. We would need a new smaller roller (which would give us a 
> natural gear reduction), a new top roller, a new back plate to guide the 
> balls, and then simply a bunch of surgical tubing. Voila.
>
> Brian
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> 

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