Practical 3D printed parts

[Jon Stratis]

We've printed a few things that have come in handy.

First, we printed some brackets designed to hold 4 pneumatic storage tanks on the robot. It was a pretty nice solution overall, and allowed us to stack them much easier than we otherwise would have been able to (half hour to design, then a day worth of printing instead of several hours of manual work to make something similar by hand).

Then one of our students came up with a design for a winch that really looks awesome. We used a winch last year as well, but that was all hand made and had issues occasionally where the strap would jump off and get tangled. I plan to get some pictures of that setup and the new setup for this year to show a comparison - your mind might be blown at how big a difference it is, and again it saves work hours on the robot! The winch last year, for all its simplicity, took a long time to actually get together. This year, all the complexity is designed in half an hour and printed!