This Week in FRC

It’s been a busy week for Team 7419! With the Sacramento Regional coming up in just two weeks, all of our members have been working hard every day after school. 2022’s gameRapid React challenges us to create a robot that can pick up and shoot cargo into a scoring hub. Additionally, it must climb up as many as four ascending rungs. With a quick recap of the game, here is what we’ve been finalizing and working on this week!

Intake

This week for intake, we stabilized the intake by tweaking our design. Additionally, we will stabilize our pneumatic cylinder by utilizing a plate on the robot drivetrain. We aim to have the intake fabricated out of metal by the end of this week!

Loader:

This week, the mechanical subteam fabricated a sturdier loader to go on our final robot. The previous loader was made of thinner aluminum tubes and flimsy wood. The new design eliminates the use of wood, and incorporates thicker aluminum tubes. The new design also sports the team's number cut out of polycarbonate plates. In short, the new loader is more robust and efficient, and is ready to tackle our upcoming Davis tournament!

Shooter:

****This week, we finished making the shooter out of metal! It sits on a new turret which is essentially a giant ball bearing, allowing us to spin the shooter around and shoot at various angles. In addition, we plan to implement beam break sensors, which sense objects that pass through a beam. This will be useful as it can be used to keep track of the cargo being shot out; letting us know how much cargo is left in the loader.

Elevator

While testing the hanging mechanism, we realized that the motors were not powerful enough to lift the robot off the ground. By replacing the previous 775 pros with the superior Falcon motors and implementing a better gearbox, we were able to generate more torque. Additionally, the Falcons provide an integrated encoder, allowing us to determine the distance that the motor has turned. Using the integrated encoder, we can develop a feedback loop to maintain the position of the elevator while hanging, which is necessary to overcome the force of gravity. We also worked on attaching limit switches, a switch that creates physical restraints for the elevator’s motors. Limit switches can be used to make sure that the elevator stops after reaching a certain height. They can also be used to make sure the elevator doesn’t go too low. This will help us in programming the climbing system of the robot.

Website Update

Our website now has a finalized media page that contains both photos and videos of our team. Check out the photo page here and the video page here!

As we enter the final week of preparation, we're excited to see what the tournament holds for us!

-7419 Tech Support’s Writing Crew