Team 2980 2013 Open Source Robot

[eedoga]

So in looking at the robot it got ugly in a hurry. Things were coming together pretty well, but a set of brackets we made just came out much uglier than they looked in CADD...I know...aesthetics aren't everything, but the flip side is that the brackets are too narrow and the tri-wheel assembly is grinding on the inside of it. Again, this illustrates the difference between assembling something in Autodesk Inventor and making it in the real world.

So, we are lucky and our material sponsor is going to cut out new brackets for us. We redesigned them so that they are stronger and made from one piece instead of three welded together. The upside is the new brackets give us much more clearance on the inside while saving us critical space on the outside also making the whole thing a major win win...Only lose part is time...We are losing time... :-(

Our team has also become sort of fractured. We designed everything in CADD, and tried to make a layout and plan for the year, but small changes have been made by various people meaning that no one has a complete picture of the overall robot. Our programming team also took off on its own and is doing things no one but them currently understand. I am a bit worried about this.

Today we are doing a "stop build" and we are going to redraw the robot so that everyone can see the big picture. We are sort of dead in the water build wise because we have to have a couple parts made, and some other parts are still in the mail...So we might as well all get caught up and regroup.

Now is the time when everything falls apart before it comes together right!?

Here is to hoping.

Edoga