CENTERSTAGE by RTX Game Animation
Our 2023-2024 Robot
Here is our current design of our robot!
Our Main Robot Ideas
We used a new CAD platform, Onshape, which allowed us to work and build together, to design our whole robot in the first few weeks after kickoff. Using CAD allowed us to create custom parts using methods like 3D printing or CNC milling, giving much more design flexibility than a solely kit-based approach.
We organized our CAD design into subsystems and used joints to determine how they would move. This allowed us to confirm that our design could accomplish all of the planned objectives and make sure that the moving parts had enough space. Using joints also allowed us to experiment with more complex features like linkages, which we used to maximize robot effectiveness.
Cardboard Aided Manufacturing is our primary fabrication technique for machining sheet metal parts by hand. By utilizing 1:1 scaled paper from our CAD model, an accurate model of the outline of a part along with any holes and features inside can be glued onto aluminum.
For complex parts with many features and for prototype parts, we chose 3D printing to quickly build real-life models. Using a new 3D printer (from Bambu Lab) allowed us to make strong and accurate parts to quickly build prototypes.
Our team also uses CNC milling to fabricate large yet intricate parts. Since our robot is 99% CAD designed, CNC fabrication is easy to set up. Since last years season, where we constructed our own MPCNC (Mostly Printed CNC Mill), we have also wired, calibrated, and tested another CNC mill (which has a metal frame and is more accurate), which allowed us to drastically increase the volume and precision of our large CNC parts.
