FRC 2016 — Stronghold

Pick up a dodgeball, shoot it through a hole 7 ft off the ground, while staying under 18" tall when carrying the ball. Manufacturing limited to a water jet and a 3D printer.

Turret system — designed in a few hours with another team member. A turntable powered by a window motor through a belt and pulley gave 20° of rotation. A linkage arm tied to a second window motor controlled inclination — 19° of vertical aim. Whole stack stayed extremely low-profile.

Whole assembly was constrained by the available tools — every part had to either water-jet flat or 3D-print, with off-the-shelf fasteners and motors filling the rest.

Robot was one of the few in the area that consistently hit autonomous shots into the goal. Qualified and competed at the District Championship and won an award for Innovation in Control.

First serious engineering project — the one that committed me to mechanical.

• Constraints (water-jet only, height limit, ball capture) forced cleaner architecture than free choice would have. I learned to start from the manufacturing constraint and design in.
• Two engineers iterating in a short window beats one engineer perfecting alone. The turret got better the moment we sketched it together.