Theo VanderMarck

FRC 9038 2026 Competition Robot: Claude

Design Lead, Team Co-Captain · CAD, Project Management, CAM, 3D Printing · 6061 T6 Aluminum Extrusion & Plates/Polycarbonate/TPU/CF-Nylon · Jan 2026 - Apr 2026

Turreted ball shooting robot with 40 ball capacity inside a 28" x 27" x 26" starting footprint. Utilized a turret, computer vision, and a variable angle shooter to easily score up to 9 6" diameter balls/second from anywhere in the allowable area. Won 3 playoff matches across two competitive events as the main scoring robot and won Excellence in Engineering at the East Bay District Event, by far the best performance in our team's history.

I personally led the full design process, ideating and creating the top-down layout, the 1.25" tall 420° turret assembly, the swerve drivebase, and the Colson/stealth wheel spindexer. I also planned out and led other team members through the design and fabrication of the winched climber and kicker indexer, working alongside other students on the hooded shooter and slapdown intake.

(Please note that this robot was named after the beloved albino alligator at the California Academy of Sciences, not the generative AI model.)

Beetleweight (3lb) Combat Robot: Toothless

Solo Build · CAD, High-Speed Power Transmission, 3D Printing, Electrical Work, Soldering · Carbon Fiber/Aluminum/UHMW/TPU/AR500 Steel · Jun 2025 - Nov 2025

3lb triple disk / simulated drum spinner combat robot with a body made of carbon fiber top/bottom plates, UHMW side rails, and TPU armor/wedges. The AR500 bulletproof steel spinner reaches a theoretical top tip speed of 250 mph and ~775 Joules of Kinetic Energy. I wasn't able to do as much iteration as my other projects due to a lack of safe testing spaces (and funds), but Toothless performed decently at competition with a record of 1 win and 2 losses at a competitive Silicon Valley event. I hope to return to this project in the future!

Mechanical Clock

Solo Build · CAD, Geometry Iteration, 3D Printing · PETG · Jun 2026 - Aug 2026

Fully mechanical clock (regulated by a swinging pendulum and powered by a hanging weight) tuned to tick at the rate of true time. As the underlying principle of a mechanical clock is that the hanging weight uses the pallet to impart energy back into the pendulum equal to that lost over time, this project required more than 20 rounds of iteration on geometries for escape wheels, pallets, pendulums, and gears. Due to unavoidable limits in material strength and available space the clock only runs for about 90 minutes, but runs relatively accurately and without ever stopping during that duration. In this project I worked on more thoroughly planning out my ideas before starting CAD and during the CAD process, which was very helpful for saving time and organizing my design.

FRC 9038 2025 Competition Robot: Alcatraz

Design Co-Lead, Team Co-Captain · CAD, Project Management, Power Transmission Design, 3D Printing · 6061 T6 Aluminum Extrusion & Plates/Polycarbonate/PETG-CF/TPU · Jan 2025 - May 2025

Reliable pick-and-place robot designed for the 2025 FRC game. Utilized a multi-purpose end effector, a single stage elevator, and a hot-swappable (fully replacable within 5 minutes with 2 different mechanisms depending on the match) slapdown intake. Had almost zero mechanical issues at competition, and achieved the team's best ever (at the time) competition season.

I worked with two other design leads to design the robot, personally pushing the team towards our final overall archetype and leading the 5-person team designing the robust, easily repairable, and hot-swappable slapdown ground intake. I also worked as a co-captain to build knowledge-transfer systems (we'd faced issues as a non-mentored team when all of our seniors graduated) and ensure team longevity, work that alongside efforts from the other two co-captains won our team the Rising All Star award for our successes in full-student leadership.

Planetary Clock

Solo Build · CAD, Gearbox Design, 3D Printing, Electronics, Soldering · PETG/PETG-CF · Jun 2025 - Aug 2025

Two-stage planetary gearbox powered by a stepper motor with internal battery-powered timekeeping (to keep the time when unplugged and bring the hands to the current time when re-started). Fully 3D-printed out of PETG and PETG-CF as a gift to a friend.