Prototyping with VEX and an electric paper plane launcher.

[xitaqua]

Hello All,

Very interesting game this year. We had a good mind-mapping session in St. Louis and we hope to have a down-select robot design by next Saturday, and hopefully we can begin prototyping major sub-assemblies.

A thought some of the mentors are having would be to prototype using the VEX system, since it is the standard system used by PLTW program, and scale down to be using ping-pong balls......

For the shooting system, use an electric-paper-launcher, and modify it to shoot ping-pong balls.

Let me know your thoughts.....

Cheers,
Marcos.

[Marc S.]

I've seen teams prototype with vex before. Just keep in mind that what works in small scale won't always work in full scale; and , whatever you decide works best in a small scale prototype will have to be fully prototyped in full scale.

[xitaqua]

Marc,

Great point. Do you do full scale prototype with wood, PVC or metal ?

Cheers,
Marcos.

[Marc S.]

Marc,

Great point. Do you do full scale prototype with wood, PVC or metal ?

Cheers,
Marcos.

It depends on what we're prototyping. Last year we used wood on our original claw prototypes but switched to aluminum for the last revision(s).
We don't really use PVC that much, unless we're thinking about using it on the finished bot(haven't since 2008).

The kOP frame helps a lot for prototyping; however, if you planning on using a kOP frame for competition then i would wage against it and use wood when you can.