As promised here is a little bit of a deeper dive into our robot and decision making:
http://youtu.be/I7jfwprVXMY
Quote:
We liked the universal claw for engaging totes on either long or short edge. We are a rookie team, so fewer moving parts is a good thing.
Any tips on reproducing the cut pattern? We have been calipering all the tote lip elements and transferring them to posterboard...it is slow going! Next we would do cardboard prototypes and finally cut the pattern out of aluminum sheet stock. Maybe we're overthinking it.
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We did not CAD the tote claw.
Instead we took an iterative mock-up based approach - measure, cut, measured again, cut.. start over.. cut.. measure.. reinforce.. etc... I know that sounds crazy but we weren't 100% sure what the best fit would look like. Each time we thought we had a layout nailed we discovered another feature that would improve it.
Andrew Remmers and Gabe Salas did a great job to perfect it. We were happy with the end result but I'm sure there's still room left for improvement.
If you're looking to reverse engineer it I would:
Find two video clips of it front on and in profile > Screen capture those clips > Bring screen grabs into CAD and trace the profile > Scale mock up and iterate
We are still chipping away at CAD for 4 bar and "tote magnet" / roller intake concepts.