Week 1
Our motto for the first week of build season is “Fail Fast and Fail hard”. Our main focus this week was to get prototypes to a point that we felt were ready for the next stage of the process, which was CAD and integration.
The Intake
We had two different prototypes that we were trying out. The first was a dustpan and roller mechanism that would rotate off the front edge of the robot. We found this to be successful at picking up notes! The groups next focus was to integrate it into the shooter prototype (See The shooter section).
The second prototype was more of an instant conveyor to the shooter type intake. At first they worked on acquiring the game piece making sure they follow the touch it and own it mentality. This developed into more of a conveyor type system with potential integration into our shooter prototype!
You can see test videos at the link here!
The Shooter
This week we started with two different prototypes. The first was a side wheel shooter, this shooter had two 4" fairlane wheels with a compression of 5". We found even though it shot the notes well we didn’t see the speed and distance we would have liked. We also were worried that as competition went on that the notes would see some differences in diameter causing the shots to be different.
This led us to prototype a different type of shooter we saw from Team 95 The Grasshoppers! See here! After some quick fabrication we found that this was the better option! It showed that it had the speed and distance that we were looking for and it took care of the concern of odd shaped notes. We are using a 4" wheel on one end and a 3" wheel on the other, keeping 1.5" of compression throughout the shooter.
Shooter test videos can be found here!
Shooter and Intake Integration
After we had our prototypes finalized Saturday after lunch it was time to integrate the two together. One intake group was able to add their intake to the shooter prototype we had made while the other did a bunch of 2D CAD to try to find the best way to fit everything within the robot frame and to stay with in the 12" extending rule.
What else was done Week 1
On top of working on prototypes we set our ways on a drive base. Like mentioned earlier in this thread we have made the switch to the MK4i modules on a 28" x 28" size frame. This week we added our support frame members and belly pans.
Something we try to implement every year is to make certain parts of the robot modular. This helps if a major mechanism fails, we would have the ability to unscrew it from the frame and replace it with a spare. To make sure this is feasible we added these cross members to mount to. We think that these will be a great mounting point for our shooter and climbing mechanisms.
One of our mentors purchased a Bambu Lab X1C 3D printer. We were finally able to test out its ability by 3D printing custom swerve covers! We really like the way this printer preforms and can’t wait to keep using it this season.
You can see a cool time lapse of one of our module covers printing here!
What is next!
This next week is a major CAD week for us. We will be getting prototypes into CAD and finalizing locations on the bot for those mechanisms and electronics. We compete at a week 1 competition so lots of work to do in a little bit of time!
#TeamREV