SA BEST plybot...

Bamse

Howdy...

I'm volunteering at Lee High School in San Antonio for this season of BEST Robotics and we are building our robot mostly of plywood and stuff from Home Depot/Lowes.

Just wanted to share some pictures and a video of our gears.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjgCl-XemI0

I thought Erco would get a kick out of this post... ;-)

mindrobots

Very nice!! Love the ply gears!
Hoe did you heat the PVC for bending? The jig and clamps is a great idea

Bamse

Fill the PVC pipe with sand and use an ordinary heat gun. Without the sand, the pipe might collapse or don't retain the heat long enough to keep it's bend. Allow for about 30 minutes to cool in the jig. We used black duct tape to hold in the sand and packed it really tight.

mindrobots

Sweet! Thanks!

erco

THAT is awesome, Bamse! Best use of wood seen here in ages. I wanna see that bot on the road. Well done, keep us posted!

Humanoido

Those are interesting wood gears. Notice how the cogs are wide enough with the proper bevel so they don't break easily. How do you carpentry these gears? It would be interesting to work up a story with details.

Bamse

Little bit of luck, we'll have a rolling chassis on Monday night, I'll keep you posted and I'll take pictures/videos...

The gears are designed and printed from the Woodgears site,
http://woodgears.ca/gear_cutting/template.html

The paper is glued on the plywood and the students uses a scroll saw to cut them...

Ttailspin

Nice work, Can't wait to see it rolling. :thumb:

I have that WoodGears Link in my favorites for a long time, Makes wooden gear works so much easier.

-Tommy

Spiral_72

Please! Let me know the p# and vendor for those gearmotors

Bamse

Besides the plywood, you can find most of the part we use for the competition here,
http://www.vexrobotics.com/products/competition-products/best

I should have more pictures and videos tomorrow...

Bamse

Howdy...

Some more videos and pictures...

The robot is now in bits and pieces since it is being painted.
The students are working some new gears to double the speed, as you can see in the video, it's pretty slow... ;-)

More to come...

Testing the limit switches on the arm,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZvd4H-3Wys

Moving arm gears,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX657I-Vcls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0cBiKRbWqM

Driving the robot,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouMMotQwF9w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HISOhtv_x4

erco

The awesomeness continues! My only comment is that your front PVC skid is probably causing a lot of friction, and it will get worse when your arm picks up a load. Might be time to make a wooden caster! Great job, I can see your students are learning and having fun. They should be quite proud of their all-wood bot. Is it named yet? Mine is Woodrow, which has a wooden body, wheels & caster.

Ttailspin

That is Crazy Cool, You guys are doing it up right.
Is the arm for bashing things?:thumb:

So what is this BEST Robotics all about? is it a competition?
Keep up the good updates.

-Tommy

Bamse

I love the idea of a wooden caster, we have a build day tomorrow and I'll definitely suggest it...
The name is not set in stone yet but Insecto seem to be the most popular name for now.

Best Robotics is a High School Robotics competition, I like it because it's so hands on and pretty much everything has to be built from scratch with limited materials.
http://www.bestinc.org/
This years competition is called Bugs, the robot need to catch flies (Styrofoam balls), cockroaches (Nano Hex bugs), termites (1 lbs bags of beans with plastic end-caps) and bug food (tennis balls).
So the challenge is to be able to pick up all these different objects and transport them to different locations.

Bamse

We had out competition last weekend and I finally got around to download some pics from the camera.
Thought I would share some more pics of our robot.
One of the pics shows how we tested the torque of the motor and found out it's about 9 lbs/in... ;-)

The students did really well and came in second overall which qualifies us for Texas Best in Garland mid November...

Bamse

And some more random plybots from the competition. One picture is actually the playing field...

Bamse

And the last batch of plybots...
Enjoy...

erco

Fantastic achievement, congrats! Is there any video of the contest available?

Bamse

Unfortunately I didn't record any video during the competition but I do have a couple of videos from practicing.

Picking up a "bug food" which is the tennis ball,
http://www.youtube.com/user/fsafstrom2?feature=mhee#p/u/5/YUjdzPt4Dgk

Picking up a "fly" which is the Styrofoam balls,
http://www.youtube.com/user/fsafstrom2?feature=mhee#p/u/1/bqmXm-znS8Y
http://www.youtube.com/user/fsafstrom2?feature=mhee#p/u/0/-Z4fdkJyA_w