Programming

Today programming continued work on the new path following implementation. We struggled with the Ramestate controller and spent most of the time debugging why our gyro wasn’t giving any value change when turning.

CAD

The prototype intake and hopper were meshed together as one unit today. The intake geometry has a bit to much compression at the bottom against the bumper which will be fixed in the real version. The intake was working well until we tried to intake three power cells at once, combined with too much compression the 3d printed hubs that attach and drive the pvc pipe broke under the load. The top roller of the intake is dual function, it moves the balls into the hopper, and when lined up with the loading station it provides a nice way to intake power cells with out them touching the floor.

The elevator design made good progress today too, the assembly is getting more of the details put in, the bracing, and gussets and bearing blocks all got mounted today. Tomorrow we’ll be working on finding spots for the cross bracing. That should be one of the last things to finalize before we start working on the hook.

Manufacturing

It was gear box assembly day today. We had enough plates for three gear boxes at the start of the day and manufacturing was busy making the final plates. The parts where all gathered and we set out assembling all of our drive gear boxes.

We only ran into one problem when assembling the gear boxes. The output shaft wasn’t constrained in one direction so it could have fallen out. We quickly fixed the problem by tapping the shaft and adding a bolt and washer to constrain the shaft. Manufacturing also cut the corners off of the bumper support rail today.