Triumphs and Trials

The title sums things up quite nicely. Well, let’s start from the bad news and get progressively better through the post. Here we go:

-The CAD team finished the entire Lift Assembly tonight. Below is the render. The lift team also continued to work on the assembly. It’s starting to incorporate drive attachments (a bracket for the CIMple Box). Below is also a picture from tonight.

So pretty pictures aside, we have run into a major design problem. Last night I went over the lift double chain reduction design with you, and I’m glad I did. Now I can point out our issue. Right before we clocked out for the night, a few of us talked about the lift. The question arose: “Is our lift braking mechanism legal?” (referring to the Disk Brake Caliper). The quick response would be: “Well, we saw the very same Tolomatic caliper used on a robot in ’08″. Chances are it was illegal then, but somehow passed inspection. With the concern fresh in everyone’s minds, Mr. Steele posted the question on Q&A. The post and response by the GDC (Game Design Committee) is as follows:

Coach: “Our team would like to use a pneumatically operated disc brake caliper from tolomatic on our lift design. This caliper is COTS and contains a pneumatic cylinder. Is this a legal device to use on our robot? Thank you”

GDC: “No, this is not considered a pneumatic cylinder (it is a MECHANISM that includes a cylinder).”

 

YIKES! This means that the design we have on the computer and the parts we have to assemble in the shop need some serious thought. The simplest fix would be to use legal Bimba pneumatic pistons and make our own similar, yet custom disk brake caliper. If engineered right, we might be able to cut some weight out.

On a slightly happier note, I finally got you the new 2011 Logomotion Skunk Logo. It was put to a vote and has gone through multiple itterations, but tonight’s final image is as follows. Thanks Wendy!

Tomorrow we have a meeting with the board members of Aviation High School and we will be presenting our progress. Jennifer, Alex and I have been selected to show this year’s game animation and our current drive base to said officials. It should be interesting! Here is the Drive Base we are taking, it now has all 6 wheels and the gearboxes!

Tomorrow shall be an exciting day. At 4:30, we will be meeting at OMAX to waterjet parts as usual. Unlike usual, we are arriving a half an hour early (so we’ll be there before OMAX closes for the night). This is because the VP would like to see what we’re up to and spend some time with us. We will have two machines running, one for our parts and the other making key chains and knick knacks for team members! I’ve been to OMAX many times, it’s always a fun place to be and a great way to spend your Friday night. If you have been before, don’t miss this awesome repeat opportunity. If you haven’t been before, what better time than now to see one of our biggest sponsor’s in action and get some free swag.

We packed up the drive base without the guts to take for display tomorrow, thanks to everyone who helped with load-out and I hope to see you all tomorrow!

P.S. I apologize for the poor image quality of the last shot. It was necessary.

P.P.S. If you haven’t noticed Olivia’s handywork already, I’d like to point out the interesting resources and links on the side of the blog posts. One of these is our team’s FLICKR account. This hosts many photos from our events. I was told that it has just recently been updated. If you get a chance, check out the awesome photo collection!

Catching Up

“Once a Skunk, always a skunk!”

Hey all, this is Navid here, ready to kick off our new team-update blog. The P.R. sub-team has brought it to the attention of the whole that we have received messages from alumni and parents wanting to know what’s going on. This concept of spreading the stories and progress of the team isn’t in any way new, and it is certainly a great way to reach out to those people we hold dear and bring them into our world over the course of the season and competition.

So, I started thinking about how we’d get the word out. Maybe an online blog would be a way of communicating back to our family and friends in a way that is easy to read and easy for me to update on a daily basis. I’m excited to share with you all a bit of insight into the season, the design, the inner-workings of the team and more. Olivia and I are going to try and keep this as up-to-date and as professional as possible bear with us. This first blog is going to be a bit long, as we have a week and a half to catch up on, but we’ll try and keep the posts to reasonable sizes.

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Where to start… Well, it’s a new season, we went to Auburn High School for kickoff. This year’s game: “Logo-Motion”. As many of you have already heard about it, I won’t go into detail. However, for those of you who haven’t, here is a link to the game animation video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxujTCgQPgg

Our first week flew by as always. We started off the very next day, analyzing the game rules and strategy. After lunch, we even had a rough field set-up, where we used human players to simulate how the game would play. We had 4 rookie teams at our school as well, and had members in the shop, helping them to assemble the kit-bots they received. It was a busy day and we certainly accomplished a lot. This year has been dramatically faster in pace and seems to be even more organized than before. We even started breaking out into groups for robot concepts on Day 2!

For those of you unfamiliar with the “Rapid Prototyping Process”, students break up into small teams and rough out a robot design. This is of an extremely low-level of detail. Students talk about what type of drive train and drive base will win the game. We discuss these key features–should we have a lift? an arm? Should we use a claw to pick up the tubes? How will we play the game? What’s our strategy for autonomous? In the past, this process has been just as effective, but certainly not as concise. It always proves a great way to brainstorm ideas, and start to put those ideas to life.

Rapid Prototyping took up the first few days of the week as we discussed those ideas, talked about pros and cons and weighed our options. Ultimately we came to the conclusion by Wednesday on one thing: The drive base. The Drive base is a critical component to the robot. We picked a 6 Wheel Drive (6WD) over our other options for many reasons. A few brought up were:

-Simplicity of design and fabrication

-Speed, but possibility for low gearing (Pushing Power)

-We had significant R&D work done on a 6WD concept over the off-season. (See image below)

This drawing is a fairly accurate model of what our concept looks like. We don’t have the cutout in the front of the frame anymore (this was originally designed for some sort of kicker or effector which required additional space). I will post a more accurate representation either tomorrow or Saturday.

Tomorrow, being Friday, is our first opportunity to cut parts! Omax, our water-jetting sponsor, works with us weekly to precision cut our components for the robot. All of the truss-work, which you can see above in the frame is highly accurate and done by machine. We take student generated models, input them into Omax’s software, and the machine does the rest! (I’m exaggerating a bit, it’s a little more complicated Regardless, it’s an awesome opportunity for the team and for us, as students to get a look into the industry. We’ll take some photos tomorrow there, to post on the blog. Also, we have picked out other components for the robot, after some diligent prototyping. I’ll talk more about those systems tomorrow night. It’s exciting to see that we are already cutting parts and could have our drive frame ready to roll (pun-intended) by week 3!

I hope that this helps to patch the ties between the team and its support group. Please contact Olivia or I with any comments or concerns as we move forward. Thanks for bearing with me!