Prototype Arm

The arm is still under geared for the current load even with two motors. The lower joint gear box is going to get reworked to add another reduction. We also noticed the belt might be skipping so we will probably up to a 15 mm wide belt. The intake(weight) at the end of the arm will be removed so programming can test the rest of the arms logic until we fix the reduction on the base joint.

Charge Station

Back on kick off after we decided to build the realistic version of the charge station I estimated we’d have it done in two weeks. Then a little less time ago I said that I should always double my first estimates. I agree with that past me. Not counting the week we lost to the ice storm it’d be right around four weeks. The final pieces are coming together.

One of the pieces that was cut on the laser had the wrong scale so we have to re cut that before we can finish assembly. The hinges for one charge station are done, the next two should be done shortly. The braces were all attached together and one of the hinges was mounted. I’d say we should have half a charge station done by Thursday night, but I’ll double that, so Saturday it is!

CAD When?

Its the point of the season when it feels like the whole team is waiting on the CAD team to release parts for the robot. They are a week behind this year(ice), but everyone is working to finish out the subsystems so we can release them to manufacturing and start building the rest of our robot. Maybe an in progress screen shot of our arm will hold you over(didn’t work for the rest of the team…)

There are a few things that we have going in our favor that make the wait on CAD a little less scary. One we already have our drive base fully assembled and all of the electronics wired. Two all of the major mechanisms have been tested in most capacity in real life and we know that they work, or what needed to be changed to make them work. Three we have a practice bot that we are using to test auto and the arm code, so these are not stalled waiting on a robot. Don’t get me wrong its still scary, there are only 21 days until our first event and still a lot left to do.