Tetrix FTC. How to cut and prepare a pipe to store balls. Shape of the pipe Pro Preview

The robotics tutorial is about the shape of the pipe its advantages and disadvantages.

  • #574
  • 08 Jun 2017
  • 5:01

How the balls inside of the pipe

The shape of the pipe opening for this FIRST Technical Challenge Robot should allow for the balls to be held inside of the pipe. The plastic plate should hold them while rotation. The shape fo the opening should allow for the rotation of the plate.

Allow the ball to enter

The plastic plate is at the front of the FTC Robot and it "grabs" the balls. When the ball is grabbed it should enter the pipe. The two edges of the opening should allow for exactly that.

 

FTC cut template for a pipe to collect and store balls

Drawing on how to cut a pipe to be able to collect and store balls in this pipe. The sheet format is ISO A4 and the drawing size is real (100% scale)

English

It's time we discuss some of the details of how exactly we cut the pipe in such shape, what's important about this shape and what are some of the advantages and disadvantages of this shape. The first thing that we have to consider is that we have this plastic plate. And this plastic plate must rotate and while rotating the plastic plate must hold the balls inside of the pipe. So, we should design and think of the shape of the cut in such a way that we can keep the balls inside while the plastic plate is rotating. And you can see that one of the sides of the plastic plate is constantly touching the pipe - as the upper side will stop touching the pipe now, the lower side is already on the pipe and it holds the ball. So, if you have a ball right here,

the ball stays and it's not falling. And especially if you move this at a greater speed, the ball will constantly stay right here. So, this is the first important thing for the shape. And that's important for every shape for each of the pipes that you might have. You must constantly have the ball up in the pipe. And the plastic plate constantly touching the pipe. The second thing I would like to mention is the edge of the pipe. So, the pipe has two edges and I hope you can see them on the camera. They are carefully designed with the following things in mind. First, when the ball enters right here we should have this edge to prevent the ball from coming right here after the pipe. So, currently it's possible because I'm applying some force with my hand but when it is only the ball, the ball is not coming to this part of the robot because there is an edge here. And it's specifically designed for this - to keep the ball from coming on this side of the robot or this side of the robot. So, it's not possible to keep the balls and to collect them in the pipe if you don't have these two edges right here. The other advantage of these two edges here is that if you rotate in the reverse direction the whole motor so you rotate the motor like this, you can fire the ball. And when firing the ball, what you can do is that you can use these two edges to direct the ball. So, they do not allow the ball to move to the left and to the right and it will keep the ball from going too much on the left or too much on the right. It will just move forward because you have these two edges here. So, the shape is important. It's important that the plastic always touches the pipe and that you have these two edges right here.

So, these are some of the important things about the construction and the cut that we have on the pipe and the shape that we've designed this cut into. So, the next interesting question is how we design such a cut and how we make this cut precise. At this stage using this robot it is not a good idea to have only tries especially when you are cutting something so we should learn how to measure and how to design a specific cut in a certain shape. What we'll try to do is to provide you with a template on a sheet of paper that you can cut and then you can glue to the pipe then you can draw around this template, we'll show you how to use it and then you can cut using this template. And this is something that we'll try to provide somewhere below the video in the materials sections. And then we'll try to build some more videos or tutorials that will show you how to design such shapes, how to implement them. But for now let's stop here. You know the advantages of this shape and you know that you should build it in a more precise way. We've provided a template that you can use to apply to the pipe and cut the pipe precisely. In some of the next videos we'll design some new templates.

Courses and lessons with this Tutorial

This Tutorial is used in the following courses and lessons