Team Blackout
We are a team of seven high school students, Ryan, Xavier, Otto, Sam, Seb, and Grayson who have a passion for robotics and are excited to participate in the First Tech Challenge 2023-2024 season. With a combination of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and software development skills, we approach every challenge with a multidisciplinary perspective.
Prints for All
Blackout Robotics understands the importance of 3D printing. It is the basis of custom parts and design in First Tech Challenge. Some parts need special 3d printing specifications, and others just need printing! If your FTC team needs these capabilities, we are here to help! Just upload your print files in STL format below, and we will print and send the part to you, with whatever specifications you like!
CAD/Robot design
This is our CAD of our Centerstage Robot, designed for Centerstage and our own original design. We worked to produce this design that works well for 2023-24's design challenge and we are exited to show the produced version. Last year we used Onshape for our design but this year we designed our robot in Fusion 360, more versatile for design and group projects. If your team wants specific help/advice with CAD and design please feel free to contact us through the section on our website.
This was our second drive-base and one of our most proud designs. This drivebase is low to the ground so might be your preference for this seasons game compared to V1, but is also very wide. With this drive-base we decided to make it out of a mixture of aluminium and metal. However, like the first version, you can also use wood to make it. Currently the drivebase CAD has our full side plates on however, we have seperated the two parts so it is easier to separate in your cadding software. We will soon update this so it is more straight forward to download.
This was our first drive-base we designed and created! We decided to use metal as our exterior plates however don't worry, you can also use wood! The control hubs can also be mounted in various ways and the exposed extrusions allow for a variety of connections to the drive-base!
Drivebase explanation
This year's drivebase is designed for maximum agility and speed. For our drive motors we use a 9:1 gear ratio on REV ultraplanetery motors. This ensures that the robot is fast but still has enough torque. This year we also designed our drivebase to be low and narrow meaning that we can easily fit under the stage door and that we can fit through the trusses. Our drive base designer Otto also maximized internal space by using perpendicular gearboxes in the side plates in order to fit other mechanisms in the drivebase
Scoring mechanism
Here our intake will drop the pixels onto the outake and scoring mechanism we can see our angled in outake mounted on Gobilda viper slides for a smooth transistion up to the backdrop. These slides are perfectly angles in order to be paralel to the backdrop. Our intake powered by servos flips over and then precisely drops the 2 pixels into the backdrop allowing to score. Overall we are incredibly happy with this system and are confident that it will deliver
Back view
This is the back view of our robot revealing our control hubs and battery position. This design allows us to maximise space on the inside of the robot for our innovative scoring mechanism while also allowing to have an easily accesible place for wiring battery mounting . Our innovative latch on the back of the robot allows to have organised and efficient cable management and it also allows for quick battery changes in the heat of an intense tournament where efficiency is key.
Front view
Here we can easily see the front view of the robot and all of our mechanisms intergrated into one seemless design. All of the individual components will all intergrate together and flow seemlessly creating a robot where all conponents work together to form a robot that can dominate this years game. We have also included our hangers in this design allowing us to hang with ease. This is our most up to date version of our cad.
Intake
See how our intake effortlessly grabs pixels, drops them onto the backboard, and repeats the process with precision and ease. Here as you can see we use an active intake that allows us to pick up pixels with presision and speed. The tubing shuffles the pixels up the ramp and into our outake allowing for a effortless transition to the scoring mechanism Crafted for top-notch performance, this intake system is a game-changer for the 2023-2024 Centerstage season.
Awards
2023 - UK Inspire Award National Champions
2023 - GB South East Regional Winning Alliance
2023 GB South East Regional Inspire Award
2021 Freight Frenzy winning alliance
Contact us!
Send us an email to ftc.team.blackout@gmail.com or fill out the survey!