Assembly pain begins, the intake is progressing slowly, the climber is making some steps forwards and more steps backwards. The team assembling the intake discovered they placed the 1 x 1 supports on the bottom at the incorrect location about halfway through today. It was also discovered some of the shafts we made had been tapped to 1/4″-28 instead of 1/4″-20… The bearing holes on most of our poly carbonate pieces are also very lose.

The team assembling the climber managed to get the plate on, the bearings pressed on, and the motor attached. Unfortunately they quickly discovered the put the plate on backwards so the motor blocks the access port to the winch. So they will have to fix that tomorrow.

Two 3D printed pieces failed today, one on the climber and one on the intake. The intake piece that failed is a replacement for a fender washer. The print had poor/no adhesion on the wall layers, so it just split. The climber print that failed split on a layer where the filament was changed resulting in poor layer adhesion.

Bumper assembly progressed nicely through out the night, which was a nice change of pace. The bumper team managed to get all of the top side of the fabric stapled one, and all of the numbers applied. We cut our numbers on a Cricut with some white heat transfer vinyl this year. We will report back to see how they hold up over the season. At least its very cheap to make replacements if needed.

Schedule

Today has made me re-evaluate the schedule, we will be lucky if we get the intake finished by the end of Saturday at the rate we are currently progressing. I’m not sure why each step in assembly takes so long, there are only a few bolts at each point but for some reason, gathering the parts and putting them in the correct orientation takes about an hour. Its super disheartening to see the progress move forward a part at a time. The robot might be fully assembled by next Saturday.