Tetrix FTC. How to cut and prepare a pipe to store balls. Length and cap Pro Preview

In this robotics tutorial, we would discuss the length of the pipe and its dimensions. These are general considerations for every container on a FIRST Technical Challenge competition. 

  • #575
  • 20 Jun 2017
  • 2:50

Volume

The most important thing for a container is its volume. This is "surface of a side" x "height" - in our case for a pipe. You should consider the volume that you need depending on the number of objects that you would like to collect.

Opening of the container

You can not push a 200mm ball into a 100mm pipe. It is important to know the size of the objects that you are about to collect to make sure that they could be collected in all circumstances. This seems to be a common sense, but if the object is not exactly round, and is not a sphere you should think harder about how to achieve this.

FTC cut template for a pipe to collect and store balls

Drawing on how to cut a pipe to be able to collect and store balls in this pipe. The sheet format is ISO A4 and the drawing size is real (100% scale)

English

In this video we'll discuss the length of the pipe and its dimensions.

What we have here is a pipe and we use this pipe as a place that we can collect different objects. In our case these are balls. And the original FTC balls are larger but currently for this recording I have these balls. So, as with any container what's important is the volume of this container. And we have the diameter of the pipe and this is something that we don't have that much choice because there are specific pipes with specific diameters that are manufactured and you can just buy one of those. So, it's pretty hard to manufacture your own but it comes in different lengths so you can decide on the length of the pipe and what length would you like to have. What's the consideration here is that from the highest point of the cut which is right here let me just rotate this

to the highest point of the pipe you should have enough place to put as many balls as you need to contain. So, if there are 3, you should have place for 3. If you need to have 100, you should have place for 100. So, that's the consideration here to have enough space and this is something that you should measure. How? First, you take the ball, you measure the diameter of the ball, of this sphere and if you have this diameter probably it's about 8 cm and you measure the diameter of the ball and then you decide: 'Okay, I need to contain 10 balls in here so I need something that's 80 cm and you should design your pipe to be with a length of 80 cm. And this is something that you should not forget because once you cut the pipe right here at the top there's no going back. You should buy another pipe if you make a mistake and cut it too short. And of course, let's not forget the cap. We should have a cap so that we can put it

on this side of the pipe and this will prevent the balls from escaping the pipe. So, it's important to have a cap like this.

Courses and lessons with this Tutorial

This Tutorial is used in the following courses and lessons