ENTRY
07

September 23, 2026

Chassis Redesign & Intake/Shooter Brainstorming
Duration 2.5 hours Attendees Josh, Torin, Sarah

Meeting Summary

We tore down the chassis from our last meeting and rebuilt it with a standard mecanum wheel layout and a smaller wheelbase. By the end of the meeting it was fully built and we test drove it. We brainstormed intake and shooter designs, watched videos of top FTC robots from last season for ideas, organized our tools and parts, and launched our team website.

Build: Chassis Redesign

  • Took apart the previous design, which used a straight beam across the front
  • Rebuilt it with a standard mecanum wheel layout, instead of our previous flipped design where the wheels faced sideways relative to the direction the robot drove forward
  • Chose a smaller wheelbase so the drive motors stay out of the way of our intake
  • The robot is currently wider than it is long, and we plan to have a ramp out the front for the intake
  • Finished the chassis, got it running, and test drove it
The new chassis frame during assembly, with four mecanum wheels and drive motors on a work table
Assembling the new mecanum chassis
The finished chassis with the battery, Control Hub, and wiring installed, powered on
The finished chassis, wired and powered on
Test driving the new chassis

Code: Test Drive Results

  • Driving forward/backward and strafing now work correctly
  • Turning is reversed and still needs to be fixed

Intake Ideas

  • Main intake: sturdy rubber bands stretched across a roller to grab the balls
  • Side feeders: screws (augers) on each side of the main intake to pick up balls across a wider area and feed them into the rubber band mechanism
  • From the intake, the balls would move into the shooter
  • Josh brought 3D-printed screw prototypes to the meeting
Prototype intake roller: two 3D-printed discs on a shaft with rubber bands stretched between them
Rubber band intake roller prototype
A 3D-printed screw (auger) prototype for feeding balls into the main intake
3D-printed screw (auger) prototype

Shooter Ideas

  • Discussed several types of shooters
  • Leaning toward a rotating turret shooter

Research: Last Season's Top Robots

We watched videos of leading FTC robots from last season. Ideas we took away:

  • A rotating turret shooter
  • Feeders on either side of the main intake to guide balls in
  • Side and back guards (plates) around the robot

We also saw Limelight cameras on these robots.

Design Decisions

  • No gearboxes or chain drives: we decided to avoid them to reduce the number of things that could go wrong
  • Vision: we want to get a Limelight camera
  • Game pieces: for now we are using pickleballs to roughly estimate sizes and fit until we have balls that match the game specification

Organization & Outreach

  • Organized our boxes of tools and robot parts from last year's prep-course kit
  • Sarah, with the assistance of Claude, built and launched our team website, ferociousturbochickens.com, adding the home page, engineering notebook, resources page, and fundraising flyer, and made numerous edits
  • Set up GitHub to back up every version of the website

Homework / Action Items

  • Everyone: brainstorm intake and shooter ideas
  • Josh: redesign the 3D-printed screws that feed balls into the main intake
  • Sarah: fix the reversed turning in the drive code, keep working on the website, and write this notebook entry

Next Meeting

  • Start building the shooter and intake

This notebook was created with the assistance of Claude AI and Handy dictation software.