We had a nifty list of things to do today before 6:00. We didn’t have a large crowd in the morning, but we got a lot done.
In a nut shell: We continued routing the final bot, we changed out the window motors we blew out on the arm last night. We added the better chain tensioning system for the lift and developed a latching mechanism.
The window motors died, because when we picked up game pieces, we slammed it back and drove around with it wobbling. These motors have what we presume are nylon worm gears, which don’t handle other motion well. To keep the new motors from doing the same thing, Alex and Franco designed a mechanism which latches the end effector in place, when it’s in the upright position.
We got all this done a little before 5, leaving roughly an hour for the programmers to get ready.
We had endless problems with the end effector. Without the time left to fix the code, we ran the bot at our usual Unveiling Demo/Ice Cream Social without it. We showed our driving capabilities, lift speed height, pushing power, our minibot and more.
Considering our current condition, I’d say it went well. The upside to tonight’s extra drive time is that we figured out some changes to make, and we still have a robot to play with for the next three weeks!
I think that tomorrow, being our final build day will mean a rush to finish the main bot. However, we will be maxed out on people, so I assume we can fix the code on the practice bot and attempt to solve the end effector problem, now that we know what caused it. We will be there until midnight when we bag it up and call it the end.
With our current schedule of 9-10ish, I get home so exhausted that I can’t really write my posts as well or as detailed, so sorry.
P.S. We also have the final bumpers ready.
P.P.S. Our weight requirement is easy to dodge, we still have plenty of weight for the deployment and mini-bot.
P.P.P.S. We aren’t entirely sure where to put the lexan with our sponsors for this year. Ideas?
