2022-23 Season
Title photos Courtesy of my friend, Issac Madson
the AMES Amperes
3243, dQ/dt!!!
This First Robotics Competition (FRC) team is based in Salt Lake City, Utah, at the Academy for Math Engineering and Science (AMES).
AMES is a unique of school, much of the faculty held sought-after industry positions in STEM before becoming teachers and professors. At AMES, students are taught not only their subject but also lessons learned from their instructor's career. The student body of AMES is highly diverse and exceptionally creative.
The Amperes are as unique as AMES. It is a team that is entirely student-led and driven. Students are responsible for everything from fundraising, outreach, and management to design, fabrication, wiring, and programming. Mentors embracing a very 'hands-off' approach; always available for advice or conflict resolution, but are otherwise uninvolved with robot building
TEAM Lead
I acted as the Lead Mechanical Design Engineer for the AMES Amperes, directing the design and fabrication of the physical robot. I was also the first member of the Amperes to fill an industry engineering position (at DRP Machine) while participating in FRC as a student, bringing unique design skills and machining resources and to the team.
My goal as a Team Lead was to build sustainable team dynamics developing teaching tools and creating community connections enabling ames to consistently produce unique and effective robots.
Working to ensure the validity of designs, I facilitated many design reviews between team members and relevant experts to evaluate and improve the ideas we proposed.
Innovations
FRC requires very quick system development, restricting iteration cycles and leaving little room for error on anything. Large teams with heavily involved mentors are often the most competitive. Smaller teams, especially those such as the Amperes (that place emphasis the learning and teambuilding experience) can't keep pace. Through my job I glimpsed organization methods used in industry. I quickly realized how applicable they are to FRC. Online project overview/administrative tools and CAD based product data management (leading to digital twinning) could help fix the many problems I'd observed within the Amperes.
Presenting a prototype of early arm design and engineering consultant board during a design review
CAD, Data, & Digital Twins
Computer-Aided Design (CAD) - It's a powerful tool allowing engineers to make their mistakes on a computer model (where they can easily be fixed) instead of the actual project. CAD had been used on the amperes before, but members used a hodgepodge of different programs. I convinced the team to standardize on one: Onshape. Most CAD programs run on a computer locally, Onshape is cloud-based meaning runs in a web browser and is independent of local hardware performance. Many students at AMES couldn't afford the expensive workstations needed to run CAD. Changing to a cloud-based system allowed everyone to participate; some of the coolest design work was done by a sophomore entirely on school Chromebooks.
3d printing
The Amperes adopted 3d printing for rapid prototyping and 'sanity checks', validating the scale and functionality of parts before final versions were machined. Our process significantly reduces development time. 3D printed parts are not without their downsides, they can't handle the loads that later machined versions can. Many were spectacularly destroyed, but usually fulfilled their purpose as prototypes first.
Teaching a colleague (and friend) how to use a Haas VF5 CNC Machine
CNC MAchining
Through connections with industry partners like DRP and Paramount Machine, the Amperes reliably sourced steel and aluminum components made on 2, 3, and 5-axis CNC machines with exceptionally short lead times. Sometimes only hours!
COMposites
In another first, the Amperes made extensive use of composite materials on our 2023 robot. Carbon fiber composites are exceptionally strong and stiff and were used in the arm and grabber assemblies. Designing with composites requires an engineer to consider the grain of the material, much like working with wood; but unlike carpentry, a composite material can be tweaked, tuned, and optimized for a specific application through its layup. Most of the parts my team designed required uniform strength under different loads. We used either a 0-45-90 layup for flat plates or a 0-30-60-90 layup for tubes, both giving quasi-isotropic properties.
3d printed composite materials (nylon embedded with chopped carbon fiber) were used for complex parts where CNC machined aluminum added too much weight, normal 3d printed parts would fail and conventional composite fabrication techniques were too time-consuming.
Engineering Prints + GD&T
Good engineering drawings make all the difference in manufacturing time, quality, and cost. Most members did not share my enthusiasm.
Arm DEvelopMent Process
In addition to management and instructor roles, I worked directly on the most challenging engineering problems fac my team. I was most involved with the arm subsystem, delivering it in about six weeks.
Brainstorm
The entire team meets at the season kickoff to analyze the game. Strategies are determined and robot design criteria begin to emerge.
Define Subsystems
Finalize most concepts and split the robot into chunks of work. The tasks are small enough to be done by a sub-team consisting of between two and five people with a wide combined range of skill sets. Small, cross-functional teams ensure that a design can easily be implemented across Electrical, Mechanical, and Software disciplines.
Detail Subassemblies
Detailed views are sketched, giving an accurate representation of the proportions of individual components and how they will fit together in their assemblies.
These drawings are evaluated by other team members and evolve quickly.
CAD Modeling
With most conceptual design work complete, highly accurate computer models (CAD) are made from detailed sketches.
Systems and subassemblies anticipated to be challenging were physically prototyped and tested. Data is collected and used to improve CAD models.
Digital TwinS
A virtual, version-controlled robot model is available to every team member. This allows programming to start in earnest before the robot begins to be built
CLICK HERE: Complete Robot CAD (it's really cool!)
Procurement
Commercial of the shelf (COTS) parts are used wherever possible, reducing the load placed on machinists and fabricators
Industry connections are leveraged to obtain parts at reduced costs and low lead times.
MANufacture
Complex custom parts are outsourced to contractors and sponsors for production.
Simpler parts are made in-house at the AMES workshop.
Assembly
Everything comes together and the robot finally takes shape. However, unforeseen compatibility problems are inevitable and the robot may be disassembled, then reassembled several times until it works.
Testing
Robot bounces between the programming team for testing and the electromechanical team for repairs.