Well its week six, the past six weeks have gone insanely quick. The robot is starting to come together, tonight we plowed through several robotics and made a major push to get the robot done. In previous years I would be insanely stressed out right about now, its true that we have much left to do on the robot, but we have a little breathing room this year.

The CAD team was had a busy night, but were very productive. They finished all of the major work on the hopper, and intake tonight. The intake got mounting points for a pneumatic cylinder, brackets to mount it on the other side, a geometry change to the mounting plate to add a hole for the hopper. The plate that mounts the intake pivot, and motor to the frame got a reduction to 1/8″ aluminium instead of the 1/4″ it was before.

The hopper got one of the rollers for the intake added to it, along with some structural supports an mounting reconfiguration. We are planning on putting our electronics underneath the hopper so we need to be able to access underneath. The hopper is supported by two shafts running across the bottom, the current plan is to unscrew one or two of the shafts and use the remaining shaft as a hinge or just take it off.

The CAD team made a bunch of part drawings today, and our CNC router is going to be busy for the next day at least. We have 6 metal plates, 5 polycarb pieces that need to be cut. Thankfully the router doesn’t complain about the work load!

Programming was busy working on dashboards, and fine tuning autonomous paths today. We need to have a strategy meeting to list out possible autonomous modes well need for Del Rio.