Today was a day filled with progress. Most of the sub systems exist assembled, but not necessarily in the robot yet. We started and mostly finished and electronics board today, its a two level board with pdp, vrm, and pcm below. On top is 14 spark maxes, and roborio. Its the nicest electronics board we’ve ever put on a robot. Well its not on the robot yet…. But it will be soon.

The hopper was fully assembled today and the sent straight into a required redesign. The motors driving each side of the of the wheels / belts intersected with the room for electronics board. The motors are moving to sitting on the top, and we are switching to a rev ultra planetary gear box.

The intake was finally fully assembled today with the non moving roller, and cylinders. There are a few geometry parts that could be improved, a collision with the non moving roller if the polycarb flexes. We tested the roller, and spun a bearing while testing at full speed. Probably didn’t need to test it at 100% power, but we’ve learned we need to add spacers in between moving parts. The intake also didn’t intake any balls running less than 100% power. Some of the geometry got tweaked and the ball has a dead zone which will need to be fix.

The elevator ran under power for the first time today. We got all of the delerin spacers for routing chain made and put it. Then we broke the chain and reattached them together. The elevator moves very smoothly under power. We found out that we probably need to add hard stops on the stage 0 to lock in the max point of stage 1. We also need limit switches. We hope to use magnetic reed switches.

So we’ve made a few good steps forward but stumbled along the way, the intake and hopper need some decent revisions, hopefully we can make those all on Tuesday and get the next revisions running by Thursday. We also still need to make a small spring action deployed hook, the elevator currently maxes out at 63″ tall, just barely hitting the top of the bar. I’ll make sure to grab some photos of what the robot looks like on Tuesday.