FRC Team 8096, Cache Money

Design

Early in the design process, we established that the intake needed to reliably acquire cylindrical game pieces from both the ground and from a human player station. We decided to use rubber rollers on either side of the game piece to provide compliant, high-friction contact, allowing the intake to tolerate misalignment while still pulling the coral into the robot. We also knew the robot needed to score on all four levels of the scoring structure, which meant the intake and arm had to maintain a consistent orientation relative to the game piece throughout the motion. To achieve this without adding excessive complexity, we developed a mechanically linked arm-and-intake system that preserved a fixed intake angle as the arm moved. This allowed the robot to raise and lower the arm to score at different heights while keeping the intake properly aligned for both pickup and release.This linkage-based approach reduced the need for additional actuators or complex control logic and improved reliability. Iteration was driven by physical testing and driver feedback. Early prototypes revealed inconsistent game piece capture and alignment issues, which were corrected by adjusting roller spacing. This adjusted roller spacing also tended to break prototypes due to the higher compression of the game piece, which was fixed by strengthening some areas of the overall assembly and swapping the bottom rollers to a smaller diameter version.

Manufacturing

The intake system was prototyped and manufactured using a combination of CNC machined polycarbonate and plywood sheets and 3D-printed brackets to allow rapid iteration. Off-the-shelf motors, shafts, bearings, and fasteners were used intentionally to reduce development time and improve reliability, allowing custom effort to focus on geometry and system integration rather than basic hardware. Parts were designed so they could be quickly re-machined or reprinted as geometry evolved, which was critical given the compressed build schedule. Assembly and serviceability were also considered in the layout of the mechanism so that worn rollers or damaged components could be replaced efficiently between matches.