About
The Game
Ultimate Ascent was the 2013 game.
The game was centered around launching Discs (Frisbees) into four levels of goals. The most challenging and highest level of goal was only able to be scored on by colored discs, of which there were far less of them. There was an endgame where teams had toClimber a jungle gym like pyramid to up to three levels.
Team Abilities
2013 was the rookie year for W.A.F.F.L.E.S. and we had extremely limited Manufacturing resources, as well as a low level of overall experience with designing and making robots. Some aluminum welding was done externally, as well as some cutting for the final intake. The rest of the manufacturing was done with simple hand tools.
The 2013 robot was also only put inCAD after the robot was manufactured.
Robot Name
Was named after the syrup, with the connection that syrup goes on waffles.
Fun Lore
- Black and Yellow checkered tape became a bit of a staple for this robot to make it “look nice”
- The dumper indexing was originally prototyped out of LEGO. This was later changed to use VEX Robotics Competition parts from our VEX team that was running at the time.
- The climber was added just a few days before stop build day
- Much of the metal was sourced from scraps, and the intake was specifically ridiculously overbuilt (we didn’t really know better)
The Robot
The robot at a basic level was a very simple robot with a Ground Pickup for the discs, with a simple single pivot low goal Dumper to deposit into the low goal. The robot also had a passive hanger to climb to the lowest rung.
Mechanical Design
Drive Train
The drivetrain was a simple unmodified 4 Cim Kitbot chassis featuring a 6 Wheel Drop Center design. Primarily this was chosen because of accessibility of the kitbot and that for the time, the kitbot was a similar level of performance to most high end drive trains. This specific kitbot was just before the 2014 bent sheet metal kitbots (like the one on 2014 Robot Mackenzie), and was made out of primarily C channel aluminum.
For the most part the drive train had no critical issues. There were some wheel cracking issues that did happen over the season with the 6 inch high grip wheels from AndyMark. However this was with an older version of the current high grip wheel where there was less support around the spokes compared to now.
Due to the extreme weight of the [intake, the deployment state of it would shift the weight distribution on the robot dramatically, which contributed to some inconsistency with driving and Autonomous modes
Intake
The intake was designed to be compliant to allow discs to