Shooter Prototype and CAD Updates
We finally got this shooter working well. Ended up with the ThriftyBot 4” Solid Urethane Wheels in pairs all running off their own falcon.
We’ve still got a lot to work on to see if we can get the desired spin-up time with just 2 falcons rather than 4, and how well this works when it’s sitting on top of a big arm, but we feel much better about the shooter than we did going into the weekend.
On the other hand, we’re still NOT happy with our intake testing. It seems that having two sets of mecanum rollers trying to center the ring is not working. We beefed up the ratio on the intake and it still stalled out on the sides. We’ve got plans now for a much more active centering intake, also like the ones 3255 prototyped (good blog, guys!), initial CAD of it below the video.
CAD Updates!
Most of the arm details have been worked out. We debated how much of last year’s arm design to keep and how much to change. After much deliberation (and @burbozo3467 having to change the arm joint in cad 4 or 5 times), we think we’ve settled on a live thunderhex axle on top with the Rev Thru-Bore encoder on that live axle.
The biggest pain on last year’s arm was having to remove and shim the 3d-printed gears from the arm at every competition to keep the slop between the arm and the encoder at a minimum. This was exacerbated by those gears being inside of the arm uprights.
Currently the arm is geared in the CAD at 144:1, it should be pretty controllable and we should be able to climb off of it.
