To start the day we tested the dual over head rollers which are using PVC rollers from our 2020 robot. This prototype didn’t work well, the first roller doesn’t seem to have enough grip to pull the cones in.

We decided to take a small break from our weed wacker prototype to explore using vectored intake wheels. We saw open alliance teams having great success with them. If we are able to center the cone reliably with out weed wackers our robot gets simpler and lighter.

Our first attempt used the dual over head roller prototype, we changed out the first roller for vectored intake wheels. Unfortunately for us the spacing on the first iteration was too tight, with a .25″ gap between the vectored intake wheels and the second roller. Too much compression means the cone didn’t center well. In the below gif the wheels were also on the wrong side which vectored the cone to the edge of the robot.

The second attempt used a different test bed with .5″ spacing between the vectored intake wheels and the back roller. This had slightly better results, it took in the cone easier but there was too much spacing between the vectored intake wheels on the shaft. This allowed the cone to get stuck between wheels. Tomorrow we will increase the number of wheels and play with the distance between rollers to see what works.

The buddy carry prototype got assembled on the swerve drive chassis today. We ran out of heavy and easy to secure things to add on the swerve drive chassis. Tomorrow we’ll find more heavy stuff to strap down and attempt moving around with a full weight robot on the forks. Our plan is to test driving up the charging station with a partner.

Charging Station

We are attempting to build the team version of the charging station. Tonight we attempted to bend some of the aluminum parts that we cut out on our laser over the weekend. This didn’t go well, the pieces kept breaking during the bend. There is some speculation that we might have gotten/used the wrong alloy for the first sheet of parts. We will be cutting a smaller piece out of our recently purchased(known alloy) to test tomorrow and see if we can bend it. Oh the joys of doing something for the first time during build season.