Texpand
This initiative is to expose more young South Africans to FTC and the world of robotics as an amazing way to have fun and learn valuable STEM skills
Our mission is to is grow and expand as people and as a team, while bringing others along with us. We are passionate about being part of creating interest in STEM skills in South Africa, and bringing opportunities and hope to students that don’t have easy access to FTC and robotics opportunities.
16
13
4
100+
Contact Us
#team_texpand
teamtexpand@gmail.com
Expanding STEM skills through robotics
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Contact Us
#team_texpand
teamtexpand@gmail.com
Expanding STEM skills through robotics
Parts and Outreach expenses needed for the start of the season
R35 000
This sponsorship will go to funding our preseason outreaches which includes demonstraions to new FTC teams, demonstraions at schools that possibly want to start a FIRST team but want more infomation, Robotics activation workshops and coaching sessions for existing teams. This also covers the initial season parts for our robot and the cost of buying the new game field.
Outreach and pit expenses for the second half of the season
R22 000
These funds will go more coaching workshops for FTC teams in the build season as well as more Robotics activation workshops that we might run at some township schools. This will also cover our pit area at nationals with displays of what we have done in the season including Robot design process, Outreach, Sponsors, Connect award outreachs and some fun extra stuff about our team. Then if we qualify for Worlds we will reuse there
Stuff that would be nice to have but isn't necessary
R35 000
This is for new robot parts and equipment that would be really nice to have and help us take our robot to the next level but we don't need it the compete. This would cover better servos from Axon, and spare control hub for prototyping and having a spare is good because our one was acting up last year it will also get us motors that are faster so our subsystems will be faster resulting in a better robot
Worlds Travel and entrance fee
R370 000
If we qualify for worlds we will need funds to cover our travel expenses and entrance fee
Our current sponsors that have helped us get this far include
Contact Us
#team_texpand_ftc
teamtexpand@gmail.com
Expanding STEM skills through robotics
Our full budget for the entire team of 9 members and 2 coaches to travel is around R389 000 (US$20 000). Thanks to some generous sponsors we have reached our initial target of R100 000 (US$ 5 500) that we needed to raise to enable our minimum required team to compete. So we are sending a team!
However, our weak currency means that some of the rest of the families are finding it difficult to raise the funds needed for flights and accomodation, so we are continuing to look for sponsorhship that will subsidise costs, enabling the rest of the team to make the trip to the World Championship too.
And here is where you can help that dream become a reality. We need businesses and individuals to partner with us in raising the necessary funds for Team Texpand to get to Texas, and we only have until the 24th March to decide if we have enough to register for the Championship or pull out. Considering the travel and accommodation expenses, we need to raise R35 000 per person. Please would you consider being part of our adventure and part of our mission to expand STEM skills in South Africa through robotics. To help make contributing as easy as possible, we have opened up a number of channels for you to make contributions. You can:
Pay directly into our Texapnd bank account. Texpand is a registered non-profit company.
Bank name: Standard Bank
Branch name: PINELANDS
Branch code: 6309
Account holder: TEXPAND NPC
Account number: 10 18 405 556 1
Account type: CURRENT
Please use your name as a reference, unless you wish to remain anonymous.
Make easy online payments by clicking through to our Back-a-buddy campaign.
Click here to visit our campaign page.
Receive, in South Africa, an 18A tax certificate for contributions by making payment to FIRST SA - a PBO who runs FTC and will pass all funds on to us.
Please email teamtexpand@gmail.com to set this option up.
For corporate sponsors we are offering tiered sponsorship benefits according to your level of contribution.
Our current sponsors that have helped us get this far include
Expanding STEM skills through robotics
As a team, we’ve realised that robotics coaching is inaccessible and unaffordable to most South Africans. Our team works to provide learning opportunities and teach disadvantaged students who would not otherwise have a chance to engage with technology. Through our efforts we hope to improve the future of South Africa’s youth and repair the massive lack of STEM skills and awareness in South Africa.
We train students in several different ways. We have offered personalised robotics coaching sessions to several South African FTC and FLL (FIRST Lego League) teams, as well as international teams. We developed a robotics activation course which teaches the basics of mechanics, coding, and 3D printing/CAD (computer aided design) with hands-on lessons that allow deep learning to take place. It’s been adapted for pre-K, primary, and high school, and has been used to introduce roughly 500 students to robotics.
Because we have learnt so much from the generosity of the FIRST community, our team aims to give back by helping other FIRST teams. We have assisted or mentored over 100 FTC teams, and are always willing to help teams on the FTC discord, which has over 20 000 members.
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Our team seeks regular engineering input from STEM professionals during our build-season. We aim to foster relationships with businesses, and not only learn from them, but also collaborate with them on our various outreach projects.
Contact Us
#team_texpand_ftc
teamtexpand@gmail.com
Expanding STEM skills through robotics
We are Texpand, a FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) team from Cape Town, South Africa. We are based in Pinelands, but we have members from as far as Robertson, Simon’s Town, and Mitchells Plain. Our members are aged 12 - 17, and each have between 1 and 5 years of FTC experience. Our team has no technical coaches and is not run by any school or organisation. As a result we have learned all we know from online resources, other FIRST teams, and seeking input from industry professionals. We aim to pass our skills on to other teams who are starting out or looking to improve, and to students with little access to technical learning opportunities.
We brought back what we had learned from our experience at the World Championship, and once again massively improved our game in all aspects. We ran a rookie boot camp and recruited 7 new members, which we trained throughout the season. We made even more connections with the STEM and FIRST communities, and implemented highly advanced mechanical and software systems. Our outreach expanded greatly, and throughout the season we introduced roughly 500 students from disadvantaged communities to robotics and technology. We won the robot game and Inspire award at the regional and national competitions, and once again qualified for the World Championship.
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At the World Championship, we were much more prepared than in the previous season and managed to efficiently organise our time and go to site visits at engineering companies in Houston and build more meaningful connections with other FTC teams. The 4 day long competition was an exhilarating experience, and in the end we brought home the Control award for our division — which is awarded for coding and software excellence — and were apart of the winning alliance, making us the 2024 CENTERSTAGE World Champions alongside our alliance partners, AiCitizens from Romania and The Clueless from San Diego.
We learned exponentially in the off-season before Power Play, and during the season. We expanded our competition beyond robot building and programming alone. We trained ‘apprentices’ for the first time, who then joined the team, and we worked on new ventures such as reaching out to professionals in STEM for engineering input and sponsorship for better parts. We also started a website, social media campaign, and began our outreaches to disadvantaged students. We connected with the wider FIRST community, receiving mentorship from many excellent teams such as Wolfpack Machina from the USA, who went on to win the Inspire Award at the World Championship.
At the regional and national competitions, we won the robot game, as well as the Inspire Award — the top award, which recognises excellence in all fields of the FTC competition. As a result, we were invited to the World Championship in Houston, Texas, where we had an incredible time connecting with international teams, and learned even more. In our division, we placed 22nd out of 47 teams (there were 192 teams randomly divided into 4 divisions), and won the 1st place Think award.
We improved our game even further in Freight Frenzy. We recruited new members, and were the only SA team during the season to use Java programming instead of blocks. Once again, we won the national competition with a solo score of 108 points and the Innovate Award.
Ultimate Goal was our rookie season. We started with only a sponsored REV Robotics starter kit, and were a team of 6 friends, all with little to no previous experience in robotics. Despite our inexperience and various struggles caused by lack of resources and the COVID-19 pandemic, we worked hard and set ourselves on a steep learning curve, ultimately allowing us to win the South African nationals with a solo score of 89 points as well as being awarded the Innovate Award.
Contact Us
#team_texpand
teamtexpand@gmail.com
Expanding STEM skills through robotics
We reused much of our kit for Center Stage, but also added to it. Once again, we used a modified strafer chassis, but added GoBilda odometry for more accurate field localisation. We had an active intake with spinning tubes directly into our double gripper, which had forming bars at the back to correctly orient pixels. We used viper slides for vertical delivery, along with an impressive 7 axis arm that we programmed using inverse kinematics. Our programming of our arm and custom odometry localisation code won us the Control award at Worlds, and we also won the overall robot game — making us World Champions alongside our alliance partners.
Also see Behind the Bot here
Our drivetrain was a modified gobuilda strafer chassis, we got shorter U channel to make the drivetrain narrower for better maneuverability on the field
For our grippers or way of grabing the cone we used 3D printed arms with gear teeth on the end so that we could use only one servo for each gripper. We have two grippers on the robot on for collection and on for delivery
Our delivery slides were four stage viper slides, we got viper slides when our draw slides were being way to unreliable. The down side of four stage viper slides is they are very heavy, so in hind sight we should have only used two stage
For our horizontal collection slides we have modified 50cm draw slides so that we got maximum extension while still fitting in the size constraints. The destacker and base gripper were mounted on top of these slides to extend with the slides to collect the cones.
Our "Destacker" is a virtual four bar using custom 3D printed sprockets and brackets for attaching to the draw slides. This subsystem took the most time and iterations to get reliable and doing exactly what we needed it to do. Our "nest" for cone transfer is also mounted inside the destacker
We CAD designed some side panels for the robot to inprove Buff's "Swag" factor, HG molenaar kindly lazer cut them out of stainless steel for a very cool end product
Our drivetrain used mecanum wheels, mounted in-between two lengths of C-channel, powered by two different types of Rev motors and connected and braced with extrusion.
Our collection system, powered by a core hex Rev motor and a chain, consisted of shafts with rubber tubing to grab the freight and bring it into the robot and up a perspex ramp.
The linear slide was made using kitchen drawer slides. We threaded bearings and pulleys with jewellery wire wound onto a custom 3D printed spool with a motor programmed to pull it up to the set heights we required.
We used a rubber wheel, powered by a core hex motor with a 2-1 gear ratio, to turn the carousel and deliver ducks. A suspension mechanism ensured that our wheel kept contact with the edge of the carousel, adding some tolerance into the system to reduce the dependence on accurate driving.
The servo box was positioned on the linear slide to receive the freight from our collection system. Once the linear slide reached the desired height, the box could be tipped using a servo motor to drop the freight off on the chosen level of the shipping hub.
We used some cardboard and green spray paint to make our robot look more stylish and we called the design “Lambogreeny”.
Our drivetrain used mecanum wheels, mounted in-between two lengths of C-channel, powered by three different types of Rev motors and connected and braced with extrusion.
Our collection system consisted of two sets of rollers: one to lift the rings off the ground; and one to grab the rings and bring them into the robot. The sets of rollers were powered by a single core hex Rev motor using a chain of gears.
We built a unique conveyer belt system to lift the rings up into our hopper. We mounted custom 3D printed spools onto top and bottom shafts. We ran rubber bands around the spools, with custom 3D printed hooks attached to them. The hook would grab the ring and flip it over into the hopper when it reached the top of the conveyer belt. The conveyer belt was powered by the same motor as the collection system, using a chain of gears.
Our shooter was of simple construction, designed to take up as little space as possible. It had a custom 3D printed hopper that could stack 3 rings at a time. We spun a rubber flywheel up to a predetermined speed. Then an arm on a servo motor was activated to force the lowest ring past the flywheel, propelling it in an accurate and consistent trajectory towards the upper goal.
The wobble goal arm was an arm on a pivot in the vertical axis, powered by a geared Rev core hex motor. The griper used two extension of extrusion, each powered by a servo. This acted as a simple clamp to grab the wobble goal.
We enclosed our robot in black cardboard to display our team number and logo.
Contact Us
#team_texpand
teamtexpand@gmail.com
Expanding STEM skills through robotics