[ToddF]

Did everyone enjoy our smoke display in the last practice match? And you thought that last year's stalled minibots were fun...

So, it turns out that our turret is so quick it keeps right on going when it hits the limit switches. Those limit switches are supposed to prevent the spinning wheel from contacting the turret chain sprocket shielding. When the turret drives the side of the spinning wheel into a lexan shield, the shooter slows way down, motor current goes way up (driven by PID velocity control on the shooter wheel shaft encoder), and much smoke is released. Happily, we were very prepared for such a possibility. Swapping out the shooter drive module for our spare was quick and easy.

Our practice match also showed that the pneumatic cylinders actuating the bridge arm were too small. We started out with 1.5" diameter cylinders, and downsized to .75" for weight reasons. Since shortening the tower, we have the weight to use, so we swapped back to the original cylinders. No more wimpy bridge actuation.

Good luck to all in the quals tomorrow.