Christ Connectors
FTC Team #12775
Mechanics
Our Robot Build Group consists of team members who chose this specialty because they liked the idea of being engineers, building something out of parts, and of course adding a power source to it to make it move!
We feel we worked fairly well together as a group. We make sure to discuss together where pieces go and listen when team members have ideas. One thing we feel we could work a bit better on is time management. There were times when some of our group wasn’t working on anything because other team members were building and attaching parts to the robot. For future years we hope to break tasks into smaller parts so everyone has something to do at all times.
Our advice for future teams is to persevere. Keep working hard. There will be times when this job is tough, but you’ll pull through and do just fine. Keep a positive outlook. Encourage others in their ideas. Even if it doesn’t work, it might lead to a winner design!
2017 Rover Ruckus Review
When the season began we had no idea what to do and how to do it. We built a push bot chassis and a temporary arm and continued to add on from there.
Our first stopper for the arm was too small, so it would keep hitting the ground and the robot. The stopper was not high enough to keep the arm where it needed to be but we fixed it. Konner came up with a great arm that included servos and wheels that would roll the glyph in to pick it up and then roll it out to place it in the crypto box. Unfortunately it was too bulky, long, and heavy to use on the robot.
So we had to come up with a Plan B which changed our design to a gripper arm. We’ve streamlined our robot a bit, shrinking the chassis to make it fit the 18x18x18 inch requirements. We also worked to make the arm a little bit better.It still has flaws. Currently we are unable to pick up the relic. We are hoping that after our first competition, we can come up with some ideas to improve our arm by looking at what other teams have designed.
Some other cosmetic designs we came up with was to install a plexiglass screen on two sides of our robot to display our team number and protect the main components of our robot if for any reason it were to hit another one accidently during competition. We also got a 3-D print of phone case to secure the phone to the robot as it moves around at competitions.