Week 3: Where's your robot?

[Max Lobovsky]

Ah yes, we have some serious tension in our chains too. Luckily I caught it in the middle of the design phase before anything had been purchased.

[Ianworld]

well, our drivetrain is running... sort of. We've tested our two speed kit of parts gearbox. It works, could use a little tweaking, but if it had to go on a final robot it would work. Tomorrow the rest of the parts for it come in, wheels(assembly required), some more pulleys and belts. All of which will require some machining. So it should be rolling aorund by friday. Our forklift(its not still one, but the names stuck) just was redesigned again. But thankfully every redesign simplifies its construction, which amazes me. A semi-final prototype of it could be working by this weekend. The actual final design should be built by the middle of next week. Our secret magic mechanism is still being tested, its something thats very prototypeable so its going through revision after revision. Currently its far from completion though. Pretty good progress i think.

[Wayne Doenges]

I'm just glad one of our engineers caught it. Can you imagine what would happen if that chain would break under load We have some pretty sharp engineers.
I wonder if there are any teams without technical back-up that could conceivably build a dangerous robot. There are a lot of stresses and forces that need to be considered (torsional, tension, shear etc).
Also, Lions and Tigers and Bears. Oh My! But that's just a fairy tale
My advice, please be careful.

Wayne Doenges
CAD Mentor

Power Module is complete ready for installation, just uploaded pic.

[mtaman02]

umm still in the box question is which box is it in =) / =(

[DaBruteForceGuy]

We seem to take a whole lot of time perfe4cting the design. I am striving to get the drawings and clearances as flawless as possible before we build. For the last three years we have taken this approach and it has worked well to our advantage. Though sometimes a mad scramble at the end, the more we design the less severe those copmetition-time problems turn out to be amist the battle.

And YES, the BruteForce is back for one more year