We only meet Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, so Monday was an off day for everyone. Today was an not so fun day for the CAD department, we had a few steps backwards. More one that later. Progress is happening else! The manufacturing department is busy expanding the field. We are moving the side of our field out slightly to where the pole exists in the image below.

Manufacturing has also been continuing field build work, the Terminal is almost done. We have also cut some HDPE to be used on the upper portion of the hub. It looks like there is chance that we will have the hub completed by Saturday.

Few Steps Forward Few Steps Back

In the CAD world today we made a choice that caused us some minor backwards progression. In order to more easily machine plates on the CNC Haas we decided to make a fixture plate with a 1/2″ hole pattern on a grid across the majority of a 12″ x 30″ x 4″ aluminum plate. Our gear box that we released for CANDrive, that we were planning on utilizing this year had the holes for mounting placed at 1 3/4″. We made the decision to remake the gearbox so it had holes that matched the fixture plate. We also decided that any plate that CAD produces will have a few holes on the 1/2″ hole grid pattern that will allow the part to be mounted to the fixture plate. This should simplify manufacturing of plates and allow us to iterate faster. It just stinks that we didn’t think about this in the months before the season.

Because the gearbox changed the drive base had to have a few modifications made to it. Work continued on the shooter prototype, and intake prototype. Hopefully we will have both working before Saturday’s meeting.

We also decided to make a bit more room in our bounding boxes to save room for a traversal climb.