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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.
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Contact Us
#team_texpand_ftc
teamtexpand@gmail.com
Expanding STEM skills through robotics
Motivate and Connect sponsorship goal
R46 000
This sponsorship will go to starting 4 FLL teams by paying for EV4 technic lego kit as well as the FLL field and registration fee. is also covers cost of getting to the schools for regular workshops are coaching sessions. The Connect part of this sponsorship will go towards expenses related with our stem outreach.
Robot build sponsorhship goal
R50 000
These funds are for our robot parts for the season, this is similar each year because we are always improving with better parts as well as replacing old or broken ones. We also have to buy season spcific parts that are unique to each season as well as the game field for practice and autonomous programming
Pit budget for Nationals and Worlds
R10 000
These funds will go towards 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 qualafy for Worlds we will reuse most of it with some added info about South Africa
Worlds Travel and entrance fee
R430 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
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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
The cost of professional robotics coaching is high and does not fit within the budget of everyone who is passionate about robotics. So, we have adopted a pay-it-forward coaching method, where we coach others, and subsequently those whom we taught, go on to coach others. If a team member has a skill, they take on the task of teaching that skill to others in the team who have an interest in it.
We have helped Silverlea Primary start an FLL team by sourcing the R3300 required for them to register a new team. In addititon we have spent many hours training them on thing like gears, solution design, coding, control systems, game strategy and presentation skills. They recently won the “Robot Design Award” in the Western Cape FLL competition.
We have reached out to various experts in our local STEM community who have been excited to provide our team with training. These have included professionals in Robotics Manufacturing and Engineering, Mechatronics Engineers, Software Engineers, Venture Capital Experts, Agile Methodology Experts.
We have reached out to other more experienced teams in the FIRST community who have inspired us expand our horizons and pointed us in the right direction when we have encountered difficulties. These include a First Robotics Team and top FTC team whose performance we admired.
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We arranged an outreach event at Pinelands High School to create awareness of FIRST and FTC. They have since started an FTC team which hopes to compete in the next season.
Contact Us
#team_texpand_ftc
teamtexpand@gmail.com
Expanding STEM skills through robotics
We are Texpand, a First Tech Challenge (FTC) team founded by a group of friends in Cape Town, South Africa. Relatively new to FTC, our passion for technology has grown 10 fold since we were founded. We now have a spread of experience with 4 members in their 3rd year 2 members in their 2nd year and 3 members in their 1st year. We don’t have technical coaches, so we have learned everything we know from online resources, seeking input and mentoring from industry professionals and from other teams in the FIRST community. Having also learned a lot from competing at worlds this year, we hope to pass on what we have learned on to other teams in South Africa
Texpand is a First Tech Challenge team which was created in 2020. Our team has been on a steep learning curve, as many of us did not have much experience in robotics, coding and STEM skills when we started. But by working together, sharing knowledge and skills, and a fair deal of problem-solving our team managed to win the SA Nationals Innovation Award and Winning Alliance Award in both the 2020-2021 season and 2021-2022 season. Then in the 2022-2023 season we won SA regionals inspire award and were the Winning Alliance Captain, Then at SA nationals we again won the inspire award and were Winning Alliance Captain which meant we qualafied for Worlds in Texas, Houston. At worlds we won the 1st place think award in the and were placed 22nd in the Jemison divison.
SA Nationals Rockwell Innovate Award
SA Nationals Winning Alliance Award - SA Nationals - 89 points - Solo Game
Unfortunately we never recived the trophies in this year
SA Nationals Ratheon Technologies Innovate Award
SA Nationals Winning Alliance Award - 108 points - Solo Game
SA regionals Inspire award - SA regionals winning aliance captain
SA Nationals Inspire award - SA Nationals winning aliance captain
- Jemison divison 1st place Think award -
- Placed 22nd in Jemison -
Contact Us
#team_texpand_ftc
teamtexpand@gmail.com
Expanding STEM skills through robotics
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_ftc
teamtexpand@gmail.com
Expanding STEM skills through robotics