Week 1 Part 2
Hello Everyone!
With week 1 out of the way, we thought we’d make an additional post to wrap up our progress for the week.
Design and CAD
Our overall design has changed quite a bit since our last post! Upon seeing PRi3D’s design, we were inspired to instead have the entire elevator pivot instead of using an arm. This would allow us to have the passthrough we wanted, with the reach of the elevator to L4, and an easier deep climb similar to Unqualified Quokkas’ Wooper. This idea would allow us to have a pivot similar to what was used on our 2024 robot.
With an architecture finalized, we quickly moved onto working on our final design. It takes a lot of inspiration from our 2024 robot, utilizing a similar pivot and chassis. We settled on a two stage elevator with an additional pivot for our intake to allow greater flexibility in terms of scoring and picking up game pieces.
Picking up from the Coral Mark
Human Player Intake
Prototyping
Enhanced Coral Intake
Following our Coral intake prototype from the previous post, we made an enhanced version, which can test both intaking orientations while keeping the coral in position with the sandwich structure.
This prototype had a 6.5" centre distance, same as the initial prototype, but worked much better due to its enhanced design. Both horizontal and vertical intake orientations worked decently and were able to intake in various extreme cases.
Horizontal (y-direction): A polycarb flap was later added to prevent the coral interacting with the prototype’s bottom edge.
Vertical (z-direction): It was interesting to note that the coral could sometimes “slip” into the horizontal orientation due to the wheels’ torque on the bottom of the coral.
Our next steps: In Week 2, we will CNC plates to make an upgraded prototype as shown below. The distance between the outermost wheels would be approximately the length of the coral, with the goal of being able to adjust corals into the desired orientation. (Inspired by 4481)
Ground Intake
The ground intake was precise and did not intake as well for extreme cases. Our next step is to add wedge structures to guide the corals into an appropriate orientation.
Prototyping Video Week 1
Check out testing footages from Week 1 in the video below. We will be producing prototyping videos throughout build season like last year, so stay tuned by following us on Instagram and YouTube!
Field Building
Using leftover metal piping from our 2022 hangar, we cut it to size and had one of our mentors weld the pieces together. The final meeting of the week was spent in our school’s woodshop cutting out sheets of plywood for final assembly of both the reef and coral station and we hope to have both done sometime next week.
Pit Upgrades
Over the past year we’ve been steadily upgrading our pit with new items such as tool chests, workbenches, and hardware storage. This week we received a new battery charger and hydraulically actuated lifting robot cart! To help save on costs, we bought an off the shelf NOCO Genius 3 bank battery charger and had electrical wire up the Anderson connectors themselves. This proved to be a much cheaper option than buying from Studica for the same product.
Thanks for reading our second week 1 post! We hope these posts have provided useful insight to you and your team and we hope you look forward to our next post for week 2!
