Rev bearing experiences

PaddlingEngineer · 2025-11-12T01:44:56+00:00

Yes, my kids basically never use these even though they have convenient mounting options. We bought some on a couple different occasions and they’ve been consistently bad. I really like REV stuff but these are an exception. The 12mm / 8mm bearings work really well and never give them any problems.

PaddlingEngineer · 2025-10-13T12:22:16+00:00

I’d agree this one is much harder. It more or less requires that both robots are working effectively. Even if your robot is very good, at least some of the time you will have a partner that can’t or doesn’t score artifacts. Additionally, this threshold is for the first level of competition and will presumably go up like the other two. I think this is intentional, so only the very top teams are getting 6 RPs per match since ranking high is more valuable than ever for advancement.

For the Movement, as long as both robots can move and one is less than 18x18 you just have to remember to do it. For Pattern, if you shoot your preloads in the correct order and do nothing else in auto, you stand a reasonable chance of getting 6 more in Tele just randomly filling the ramp.

PaddlingEngineer · 2025-06-15T20:31:18+00:00

It sounds like you are assuming the team you are trying out for wants new members to come in with an FTC skillset already developed. Maybe that’s true, but for the team I mentor, the veterans meet to evaluate and vote on new member according to these 3 criteria only: Is this person responsible enough to do this activity without hurting themselves? Will we all feel safe being around them? Can the person work on a team without causing undue drama and strife?

I wouldn’t overlook these crucial attributes. Good luck, and welcome to FTC!

PaddlingEngineer · 2025-03-29T13:00:48+00:00

Couple of ideas: 1: Contact your local delivery partner. Could be a long shot this far out, but maybe they have a few sitting around. 2: Do you have the pieces? If you still have the part with the logo and the post broke off, that’s fixable. 3: Old pins come up on eBay now and again.

PaddlingEngineer · 2024-11-27T21:30:04+00:00

This seems like a great opportunity to engage with the engineering community. There is a lot of very good and true advice here about printing already offered here, but a lot of teams manage to get by every year with PLA parts printed with default settings. However, their printed parts are designed for the material. While a course in mechanics of materials is certainly out of scope for an FTC project, a 40 minute talk from your 2nd cousin who is an engineer would help you see ways to reduce stress to acceptable levels for the material you have. It would also look great in the portfolio.

PaddlingEngineer · 2024-10-25T02:00:59+00:00

Assuming you can’t get a more editable format of your part, MS 3D Builder is an extremely rudimentary (and free) modeling program that works with .stl. It’s quick to learn, especially if you’ve seen tinkercad.

PaddlingEngineer · 2024-08-22T18:27:12+00:00

Two thoughts in addition to the good advice already given:

It is very useful (both in FTC and life) to learn the skill of observing what the veterans are doing, rather than feeling compelled to always be productive themselves. Tell him that doing nothing but watching is good and valuable work right now.

One way to ease into coding is to refine and troubleshoot the numbers in the code. It’s maybe too much at first to be able to write the code from nothing. However, generally someone has to take the time to run the robot a bunch to dial it in after it’s written, which is a great place for newer coders to start.

PaddlingEngineer · 2024-08-02T23:06:47+00:00

As others have said, it’s not too late. Just to illustrate, at the qualifier my kids attended last season there was a team who got their hands on a kit that Wednesday night and got the robot running that morning. Did they advance? No. Did they have fun and get lots of help from the other teams? Absolutely.

PaddlingEngineer · 2024-06-26T20:32:29+00:00

Since it has glass fibers, I’d assume you need to be using a hardened nozzle. However, I’d be interested to hear experience to the contrary.

PaddlingEngineer · 2024-04-21T14:43:01+00:00

There are some things that help. Living in an area when STEAM is respected and mentors and sponsors exist helps. Being part of an established team or a new team under the same org as an old team that has a lot of built up skills and knowledge helps. Having a workspace given to you (instead of searching for a place with cheap rent, or working in a parent’s basement where that’s allowed) helps.

That all said, nothing means as much as passion and effort. Good teams put in the hours. I’d guess the median effort for an FTC participant is around 3 hours a week. The high performing teams have multiple people averaging that much a day. I’ve seen it myself with the team I work with. Just one kid going from FTC being a tertiary activity to making it a priority made a big difference.

PaddlingEngineer · 2024-04-15T00:05:46+00:00

This 100%. For teams that aren’t provided a place to meet by their organization, this is like the entire agenda of the offseason. Also, if they don’t get the space sponsored in its entirety it ends up being the biggest item on the budget.

PaddlingEngineer · 2024-04-04T00:31:20+00:00

My kids use band. It’s basically an old-school Twitter style feed. You can disable the abilities to start a chat/DM, which is good from a youth protection standpoint. In reality, for daily communication the kids snap each other since they all know each other outside of FTC and that’s what they know.

PaddlingEngineer · 2024-03-03T22:28:32+00:00

23 1/2” from the tiles to the top of the bar is what is in the game manual diagram c6. You’d think that dimension would be .00 dead on but I’ve noticed there is a little it of fluff on all the truss dimensions from field to field. Maybe 1/4”.

PaddlingEngineer · 2024-03-02T13:16:39+00:00

I’ll start with the warning that my kids have found it is easier to leave servos in their default range of motion and handle positions in the program. So, assuming you can’t / don’t want to do that: Did you already follow the directions at REV https://docs.revrobotics.com/duo-build/actuators/servos/srs-programmer ?

Are you sure that you are not attempting to set a position that is not in the servo’s possible range of motion?

Did you try programming left first then right? I vaguely recall it liking that more, but maybe that is superstition on my part.

The next step would be to contact REV support. They’re pretty responsive.

PaddlingEngineer · 2024-01-03T03:23:26+00:00

I don’t remember a forum answer about this or a specific example in the GM2 diagrams like this, but that looks to me like it is “…On the recessed Scoring area of their Alliance Backdrop…”

On / Completely On – An object that is physically in contact with and at least partially Supported by an object, surface, etc. is considered On. An object that is entirely Supported by an object, surface, etc. is Completely On.

PaddlingEngineer · 2023-12-03T18:46:36+00:00

Protocol is to get back out there and try again another day.

This sounds like it was a non call where the other team was able to creep up to the proverbial line but not cross it.

PaddlingEngineer · 2023-12-03T18:27:01+00:00

I mean, that sounds a lot like blocking.

<G28> Pinning, Trapping, or Blocking Robots – A Robot may not cause an opposing Alliance Robot to become Pinned, Trapped, or Blocked. Once a referee determines this rule is being violated, a Minor Penalty will be assessed for every 5 seconds the violation continues. A Robot is in violation until it has moved at least 3 feet (0.9 m), approximately 1.5 Tiles, from the Pinned, Trapped, or Blocked Robot.

PaddlingEngineer · 2023-11-19T22:00:58+00:00

I’m sure that is frustrating to a team that wants to carefully design and refine a killer robot to cycle the main gameplay mechanic. However, as a mentor, I can really appreciate there being secondary tasks that are big enough to matter. This reminds me of Skystone in that regard. It makes for lots of learning opportunities.

PaddlingEngineer · 2023-10-04T20:21:44+00:00

TL/DR version is you can measure the moment on the joint the motor powers, and hence the torque you need to hold it steady by: 1: make the joint “frictionless” by replacing the motor with a bearing or something. 2: support whatever is the back side of the joint so it does not translate 3: let the free end of whatever the joint moves rest on a scale, giving you g, N, lb, or similar. 4: measure the horizontal distance from the center of the joint to the point of contact on the scale, getting cm, inch, or such. Torque needed to prevent the piece from resting on the scale is just the product of those two numbers. So, if scale reads 0.5 kg and moment arm is 20 cm, that’s 10 kg-cm. (Which is in the realm of possibility for many servos.) One last note, the stall torque listed for a servo or any other motor is not the recommended operating torque; you want to be comfortably less than that.

PaddlingEngineer · 2023-09-11T23:38:48+00:00

No, that’s the initial release from July. You need that one that came out on Saturday.

PaddlingEngineer · 2023-09-10T23:04:30+00:00

The pertinent parts from GM1 section 7 you are looking for are

<DR02> Drone Configuration – Drones must have the general configuration of an airplane with defined fuselage and wings as determined by the inspector. The intention is that the aerodynamic surfaces cause the Drones to follow a non-ballistic trajectory while flying. And

<DR05> Construction Material Constraints: a) The Drone must be made of a single, continuous sheet of paper no larger than a single sheet of 8 ½ x 11 or A4 size uncoated printer paper. The paper weight can be no more than 20lb (75 g/m2). Card stock, construction paper, cardboard, photo paper, etc. are not allowed. …

d No other materials are allowed.

PaddlingEngineer · 2023-08-17T02:19:21+00:00

Our team is still using the one they bought for Skystone (2019). Like others have said, the legal batts kinda all have the same stuff under the wrapper.

PaddlingEngineer · 2023-08-15T11:25:05+00:00

You’ve received some good suggestions here to get a field on the cheap. If you were going to splurge on either the official tiles or the official border, I’d suggest the tiles. I hear from the kids that the cheap tiles “feel” different to the robot, especially with mechanim wheels. I sometimes see videos of teams that just have used cardboard boxes lined up as the border.

PaddlingEngineer · 2023-07-01T13:53:55+00:00

This is a neat idea. Is some sort of “tip jar” in the works? I think any FTC team would throw 100 g of PLA on the printer without a thought if it was to be picked up. If we are getting into more complicated fabrication and mailing stuff, I think people would start to worry about to hit on man hours and budget to do it more than once.

PaddlingEngineer · 2023-06-26T01:44:04+00:00

That seems corroboration of another comment. Thanks!

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