This Saturday was a big push to make up some ground, an attempt to get back on track. We set the goal of having the following done.

1. Drive Rail holes for intake and elevator
2. Elevator assembled Saturday and mounted to Robot
3. Intake Assembled Saturday on robot
4. Shooter on kit bot
5. Hopper continue progress in CAD
6. Bumpers at least one set
7. Shooter mounting on robot in CAD
8. Drive Base reassembled

We accomplished #1, #2, #4, #5, and #8. So 5/8, or 62.5%, that is not a passing grade, which is rough. The first item we accomplished by the parts were ready by Saturday’s meeting where students started the reassembly effort. We accomplished most of the assembly of the elevator, we did not attach chain, waiting on 3D printed spacers, and the final stage needs the mounting holes for chain.

The intake got approximately 30% assembled before we noticed a pretty major issue and decided to stop assembly of this version. The intake is moved outside the perimeter by a four bar linkage and a pneumatic cylinder. The intake also had a Neo mounted above the highest roller, this part would extend outside the frame, and once with the motor attached the polycarb intake wasn’t rigid enough, so we decided we’d have to move the Neo to a better mounting point, inside the frame. The intake group is using this as an opportunity to ditch the four bar linkage and move to a single pivot point.

The shooter was added to the kit bot by Thursday’s meeting. We upped the compression to 2″ trying to improve the power of our shot, when a student pointed out that the gear’s were in a reduction configuration and we needed an overdrive. We switched the gears around and our shots returned to the power we had seen on the prototype. This is great news, its reassuring that the second iteration of the shooter should work just as well. We had fears that the loss of hood wrap was going to impact the exit velocity, but any loss from the wrap has been taken up by the increased compression.

The hopper continued to progress in CAD, but it is still lagging behind, we will add more resources here as they free up with their tasks so we can finish it out. We did not get any finished bumpers, we have the wood cut and the brackets made. We are waiting on our bumper numbers to be cut on a cricut.

The shooter is getting close to being mounted in CAD, its more than just mounting a shooter, as we are also figuring out the ball conveyor that brings the power cells up to the shooter, as these two systems are highly integrated with each other. This is about 50% done.

The drive base was reassembled on Saturday, and the competition robot drive also started going through assembly. It still needs gear boxes, wheels, and shafts attached.