DOCSEARCHbyAlgolia
Submit Docs

FTC50 Guide

website·Indexed 32 days ago

https://ftc50.jackcrane.rocks

A comprehensive guide for FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) teams covering the engineering process, mechanical basics, leadership, and ethics. Includes detailed tutorials on using OnShape for CAD, prototyping, robot inspections, and tournament behavior, as well as a glossary of FTC terminology.

Tokens
6.9K
Snippets
6
Records
65
Agent score
50%

What's inside FTC50

  1. Understand Gracious Professionalism in FTC

    Gracious Professionalism (GP) is a core tenet of the FIRST Tech Challenge, acting as a comprehensive framework for sportsmanship and how participants treat others throughout the competition.

  2. Understand the concept of Coopertition in FIRST

    Coopertition is a core philosophy of FIRST that encourages teams to display unqualified kindness and respect despite fierce competition. It is based on the principle that teams should cooperate and help one another succeed outside of active matches, while still competing hard to win during matches. This approach is intended to drive innovation through collaboration.

  3. Adhere to the Reasonable Expectation of Success in FTC

    The 'Reasonable Expectation of Success' is a fundamental principle in FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC). While not an official rulebook term, it dictates that teams must perform to the best of their ability during every match, practice run, and any other activity at a competition. Purposefully underperforming (e.g., 'tanking' stats to negatively impact an alliance partner) is a violation of this principle and is prohibited.

  4. Understand and apply Gracious Professionalism in FIRST competitions

    Gracious Professionalism is a core ethos of FIRST, coined by Woodie Flowers. It is a framework for behavior that balances fierce competition with mutual respect and kindness. Key principles include:

    • Encouraging high-quality work while emphasizing the value of others.
    • Treating competitors with respect and avoiding the stigmatization of 'losers'.
    • Blending knowledge, competition, and empathy to act with integrity and sensitivity.

    In a tournament setting, this manifests as prioritizing the community and the spirit of the game over purely strategic advantages.

  5. Develop an initial game strategy using a difficulty-value graph

    To determine which game missions to prioritize, create a strategy graph to identify the most worthwhile tasks:

    1. Plot the Graph: Draw a graph where the X-axis represents the perceived difficulty (Easy to Difficult) and the Y-axis represents the point value of the challenge.
    2. Analyze Missions:
      • High Value/Low Difficulty: These are high-priority targets (e.g., top-left of the graph).
      • Low Value/High Difficulty: These are low-priority targets and generally not worthwhile (e.g., bottom-right of the graph).
    3. Create Action Lists: Based on the graph, compile separate ordered lists for Autonomous, Teleop, and Endgame, ranking tasks from 'most worthwhile' to 'least worthwhile'.

  6. Establish team rules for robotics leadership

    To maintain a productive team environment, start with a clear set of rules that extend the existing school rules. Recommended focus areas include:

    • Prioritization: Ensure members are committed to the team and represent the school and team well at events.
    • Respect: Require advance notice for absences, prompt communication when unable to complete a task, active participation, and support for team decisions.
    • Contributions: Encourage sharing ideas and mandate a culture of respect where others' ideas are not discounted or mocked.
    • Safety: Require conscientious use of tools and equipment.

  7. Use Inclined Planes for passive material guidance

    An inclined plane (ramp) is a passive flat surface tilted at an angle. In advanced FTC robots, inclined planes are used passively to ensure objects slide off the robot efficiently and do not become trapped.

  8. Determine when to use CAD for robot design

    CAD is highly committal and can exclude team members without CAD skills from the prototyping phase.

    • Avoid CAD if: You are a beginner team or using standardized build systems (e.g., REV, Andymark, GoBilda). In these cases, designing on paper and building directly is often more effective.
    • Use CAD if: Most of your robot consists of custom parts. CAD is essential for digital fabrication and designing complex custom components.

  9. Prepare for FTC Robot Inspections

    Robot inspections are a pass/fail process conducted by technical judges to verify rule compliance. Teams should use the official FIRST Robot Inspection Checklist to audit their robot before the tournament. Most checklist items are strictly pass/fail with no partial credit.

  10. Draw and dimension a center-point rectangle

    Use the Center Point Rectangle tool to create a centered shape. This tool is found by clicking the down arrow next to the rectangle tool or by pressing the r key. After drawing the rectangle, use the dimension tool (shortcut d) to set the lengths of the edges. OnShape automatically maintains the rectangular shape, so only parallel sides need to be dimensioned.
    # Keyboard Shortcut
r -> Center Point Rectangle
d -> Dimension Tool

  11. Cut multiple screw holes from a sketch

    To efficiently cut multiple screw holes, use the thicken tool and select the entire sketch (e.g., 'Sketch 1') from the left panel rather than selecting individual circles in the 3D view. Set the tool type to 'Remove' and set 'Distance 1' to a value significantly larger than the part's thickness (e.g., 5 inches) to ensure a complete cut-through. Enable 'Merge with all' to validate the geometry before saving.

  12. Create a 2D square sketch for a part base

    To create a base for a part, start a new sketch using the top plane as the sketch plane. Draw a square (e.g., 25mm x 25mm) ensuring it is large enough to encompass any internal hole patterns with sufficient padding for structural strength. Exit the sketch by clicking the green check box once the geometry is complete.