Broken Axles

We're going to start fixing some minor things like a few loose screws and rearranging our wire management. We also plan on changing the end-effector to a less heavy material. This might be difficult due to the lack of available parts, but we can barter with a few people.

We've returned from thanksgiving, so we're not going to do much today. We're just going to practice our robot handling for the future and see if there is anything that needs fixing. The robot works well at the moment, but there are some things that could be improved but not today.

We just received word on what the next challenge will be autonomous. It will be difficult but possible. Tyler Asperger is the main coder on our team so it is his time to shine. Meanwhile, Jayce and I will optimize the robot so it will be able to complete the challenge in record time.

Today we were announce about our midterm. There seems to be different challenges that we have to accomplish without doing much change to our robot, and they seem interesting. The challenges consist of two autonomous challenges, a high ball launch, a high cap, and a high podium. The scoring of these challenges are dependent on time; the timing for 20 point is <20 seconds, 15 is 20-40 seconds, 10 is 40-60 seconds, 5 is 60-90 seconds , and 0 is if it does not work. These points will be added and graded from 100 points, and the midterm will be based on that; the last day to do this is the 21st of  December. We hope to do this before the due date, so wish us luck.  

Not much was done today since we mostly have all of our things in order; it looks like its mostly downhill from here , but we just have to hope for the best. 

Today was an interesting day building the robot in SolidWorks; the way that the robot is built and has bent material is quite hard to recreate. The way some of these materials are placed have to be mated with tangents and that gets very icky, but I'll do my best. Aside from that, I believe that the robot is in its final stages and there won't be much change in it from now on. 

We're not  doing much today, we are programming the arm so that it is able to work efficiently with the gears. Since there is basically a huge weight at the tip of the arm, it is going to make it difficult to move so we are going to have to add more power to the arm; the gear ratios seem to be well in order and are quite strong, so switching gear ratios at the moment is not worth it.  

In honor of the greatest day of the year, we decided to put aside our robot and work on our 3D printed air raid siren. We also helped groups out with their robots, they thanked us with a high five. Cant wait for next week to help out other groups!

Since we are the only group in the class to complete the most recent challenge we have just been coming up with ideas for the next challenge. Martin said the next challenge will be putting a cap on the pole, shooting a ball, and then getting onto the podium.