We set out to resolve the issues with the elevator hook deploying today. The bar was moved further out about an inch past where the current hook was at the start. The bar on the field is ~.63″ from the box tube support in the middle. So we should be able to climb in the center with this new configuration. We put the robot on the field and gathered the driver and operator and let them climb.

The climb worked perfectly, the robot lifts it self effortlessly off the ground. We decided to test if we would back drive again. Surprise we do indeed back drive, quiet quickly too, the robot touched the ground way before 5 seconds were up. While testing if the robot back drives we broke a gear tooth on the elevator. This is the second gear we’ve broken. Great now we have two problems to fix along with the long list of everything else.

We removed the broken gear from the elevator and set about finding a steel gear for replacement. The 20 tooth steel gear we found to replace the broken gear were different sizes. That’s strange… After counting the gear that broke it had 18 teeth, well 17 now. The elevator was assembled with the wrong gear on the versa planetary. We replaced it with the correct 20 tooth steel gear, so hopefully no more broken gears.

Alright one problem down another to go. There were a few ideas floated to stop the elevator from back driving, the two main ideas were adding a ball sifter that had the free floating gear, and a gear that was fixed, and adding a pneumatic cylinder to act as a friction break against the gears. We decided to start with the pneumatic cylinder because it was the lightest and easiest option to implement. One new hole and a cylinder with rubber friction pad later the robot was once again hanging from the hook. This time the cylinder was activated and when disabled the robot started a slow downward descent. Its not perfect, I’d prefer if the robot didn’t descend at all but with a three days until Del Rio its going to be what we have to work with.

The hopper V5 was assembled and put into the robot. We got some testing in at the end of the night, the hopper’s poly cord is too lose on one side and keeps getting thrown off. We were having terrible results with the interaction between the hopper and conveyor, until we slowed the hoppers speed to about 40% and increased the conveyors speed. The interaction isn’t perfect and sometimes power cells can still get stuck. We are going to add PTFE sheeting to all surfaces the power cell contacts and do more testing with the correct sized poly cord. The conveyor got poly belting installed, the crowned rollers have too much crown so those need to be reprinted and installed.

The students name the robot today, we took suggestions, filtered out inappropriate ones, and then let the students vote on the robot name. The students decided to name the robot Azeem. Which means a person of greatness, but mostly just students memeing.