Progress! Today was a good day, it felt like all of the past fourish weeks have amounted to something. We have visible progress on 2/4 of the sub systems with CAD coming along for the remaining 2 systems.

Programming

Today the programming team spent a lot of time running paths on the 2019 robot. We haven’t gotten the paths nailed down yet, the straight path is performing well but a simple 90 degree turn is having problems ending at the right spot. So time was spent tuning the PID values, resetting the robot and watching it drive down the field again.

Manufacturing

The robot is getting closer to being able to move under its own power. We attached the gearboxes, added the axles, wheels, and chain today. Tomorrow it should move on its own power! Exciting! This is one of the lightest drive bases we have built. We see some room for removing weight that we might attempt next year.

The manufacturing team started making the elevator parts today. If things go well we should be able to get them all done for one robot and begin assembly on Saturday. We cut one side of the shooter’s main hood today on the CNC router. The students decided they didn’t like the lightening pattern so it was cut with out it. The pattern will be refined down the line.

CAD

The CAD team designed a hook to go on the elevator today. Because we are only doing our elevator does not have a carriage the hook has to be at the top of the elevator’s final stage. This severely limits how tall we can reach with the hook. At the moment the hook sits .2″ above the run when the rung is level. That worries me. We are going to make this iteration and test it, I don’t think that it’d be too hard to add a extension that is spring powered to gain a few extra inches.

The intake and hopper teams continue to refine their work today. The intake geometry is mostly finalized. The next step for the intake is adding in more details and refining how it is attached to the robot. The hopper team is continuing to add more detail.