February 4, 2023 - Testing, Testing, and More Testing

Long day of intake/shooter testing today. With the prototype version 2.0 all assembled, it was time to refine, test, refine, test, try something else, test, and so on. Our main goal is consistency on getting the cube on the mid and high shelf. We are confident we can get the cube on the low area by spitting it back out but we are aiming for a bigger goal than that. Ideally, we are the most reliable cube scoring team at our Regional so we're doing what we need to do to get there. 

That includes moving the motors around today, trying different combinations of wheel spacing, putting in a plastic hood, putting in fabric, changing speeds of motors, changing orientations of the cube, etc. etc. 

Here's our final combination so far: We pick up the cube at 75% power. We flip the intake into the robot. We intake the cube some more so it's fully back in the assembly only touching one axle, back stopped by fabric. Then we shoot the cube at 100% power. with two full sets of compliant wheels. That set up has been fairly consistent with getting the cube on the top shelf. We want to get even more consistent of course but this was the best we got today. 

We had issues with one of the motors blowing out, some wire concerns, a pooped cube from a screw, a popped cube from the wheels, we had to extend some chain, the cube was hitting a wheel and side spinning, etc. etc. But we kept powering through!

Charlie and William got our red bumpers mostly done (yay!). A group of us also talked about the pit set up and the driver station and what we need to get those ready.

There was a parent robotics booster meeting. This seems like not a big deal but it'll be HUGE to have that set up again for our fundraising situation. 

There's still lots to do before Eagan on the 18th but we are really on the right track! Seriously, it's awesome to be able to do this consistency testing so soon. You're all great and I'm SO excited to see us out on the field in 2 weeks!!





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

February 11, 2023 - Rebuilding for the last (haha) time

Image
Last Saturday before Eagan! Wooo!!  Sam, Jayden, and I worked on rebuilding the intake/shooter for hopefully one of the last times. We used the new plates and it all came together wonderfully. It took a while because we had to assemble the new gearbox and hex hubs and stuff. So yeah, new shooter/intake is all ready. Our other big task was making the "hard stops" for the mechanism to be brought in and put out with a controller so we got that done as well. Matthew and Gettel worked on getting the front bumper all set. I didn't record a video because we only practiced shooting once or twice but, for the most part, the mechanical aspects of the robot are all ready to go for now. Yay! Andrew H and Matthew did a great job on electrical today. They installed the encoders that they could which included a lot of tedious soldering. They also installed the operating light on a bracket so we're all good there too. There's still some wire management to do among other things bu...
Read more

January 16, 2023 - Driving Base Robot and Prototyping

Image
 With everyone off work/school we met at the shop from 12pm to 5pm. Edward and Coach Sticht focused on programming the robot. The radio was being finicky so we didn't get to wireless driving just yet but we will soon. The robot DID drive and balanced on the charging station. YAY!!! That was the most exciting moment of the day. The rest of the group focused on moving stuff out of the back back room and prototyping. The prototyping went fairly well. We have a few general ideas for intakes and outputs. A milk carton was cut up as a basket. Jarrod and Mohamud did some math for us to figure out pivot points and arm lengths for a mid cone score. We're still working though lots of ideas but that's what this week is for!
Read more

January 28, 2023 - New Brackets, Website Updates, and a Booster Club

Image
We were hanging out doing stuff when I looked at the calendar and realized we only have 2 more Saturday meetings until our first Week Zero. WOAH! That shouldn't make any of us anxious but it definitely is wild just how fast time passes and how little time we really have until the scrimmages.  Build team did a few big things today. Sam and Jarrod worked on making our new and improved brackets for the intake/shooter. I gotta say, watching Jarrod be a wizard with CAD was pretty freaking sweet (s/o Solidworks). Also, Sam killed it making the steel brackets. They look so good. Build Team also moved the CIM motors around a few different times to try to offset the cube compression that was happening. The cube compression is causing the shooter action to not work reliably. We have a more ideas to try, not time to freak out. We are definitely on the right track (it works great when everything is lined up). We just need to keep iterating and trying to get that consistency. But we're conf...
Read more