Progress was made!(In some areas…) We figured out what was happening with the issues we were having with the CAN bus last night. Not quickly tho, it took us most of the night to notice that a few of the CAN bus wires had been connected yellow to green.. This took us most of the meeting to notice, but we managed to get the elevator running under PID control before leaving. Tomorrow should be the first test climb.

The hook for the climber is being finished in CAD, I’d say its about 90% done. We are taking inspiration and borrowing heavily from 6328

Team 6328 is a part of the open alliance and we’ve been following their blog closely through out the season. They’ve released a CAD model for their hook and it mostly suits our needs. We are adding an action too the hook, in order to get above the bar we need something to raise the hook up a few inches. Our elevator currently maxes out around ~63″. Our version of the hook rotates around a shoulder bolt. The energy to rotate the hook will come from surgical tube.

We got our REV robotics order in, but there was a packing error and we ended up with 5 of something we didn’t order instead of the 5 48t pullies we need for the ultra planetary gearboxes. But we did get the ultra planetary gear boxes, so we got those assembled and staged to be put on the hopper. The ultra planetary gearboxes are so small,cute and easy to assemble.

The intake V4 ran into some issues today. First the mounting hole for the pneumatic cylinder ended up in the wrong spot, putting the intake to high to compact the power cells. A new mounting hole was drilled and now its dangerously close to being outside of frame perimeter. We are fixing the mounting point in CAD, and adding some breathing room to the edge of frame perimeter. The next issue is that the belts that power the rollers now intersect with the bumpers… Whoops. There is still another problem, the intake’s third stationary roller now collides with the intake and prevents the it from moving. Intake V4 was a few steps back in many places, but it doesn’t have any dead zones for the power cell and can intake a power cell all the way in. Looks like V5 of the intake needs a little more time looking at integration and peer review to catch problems.

The shooter CAD is finished. Well V1 with out the two position hooded shooter. But the structure to mount it in the robot will stay the same between versions, as will the ball conveyor. Manufacturing will hopefully start tomorrow, we are going to delay cutting the hood plate a day to give us time to maybe get a two position hooded shooter done.

We have a bunch of stuff that needs to be done in the next two weeks, the pressure is on. The team is coming together, and everyone is willing to jump in where needed in order to get the robot ready for Del Rio. We have a rough road ahead but hopefully we get a working robot so we can start drive practice soon.