Week 3

We continued to work on the robot, including making modifications to the collector, and mounting the shooter.

Building the Robot - January 19, 21, 23, and 24, 2009

The sprockets for the collector had just come in the mail, so the team immediately put all of the sprockets on the collector, and chained all of them to the motors (one on each side). Then, after the programmers had finished programming the collector, we tested it, but it didn't work. So, we tensioned the chain with cut in half PVC pipe, and zip ties. Then, we tested it, and it worked!

After that, we decided to tackle the shooter problem. We had a shooter, and a robot, yet they weren't connected. So, the build team started with finding the height that the shelf needed to be placed at. They decided somewhere around 3 feet was a good height because even though it was just above the trailer's lowest pipes, we thought the shooter could shoot high enough to get over even the highest pipes. Also, this height allowed for maximum orbit ball holding. But, the amount of rollers, 10, was excessive and was impeding in the robot's ability to hold orbit balls, so we took out 4 rollers. This allowed for the motors to be able to focus on getting the balls up to the shooters height, and not waste its energy trying to get it all the way up the robot. This also improved the amount of chain popping on the sprockets. Even though the shooter was mounted, the angle for which the orbit ball was going to come out at was not confirmed. Two students worked on trying to find the optimum angle for the ramp. They had to consider compression, and how high and far they wanted the orbit ball to go. They used duct tape and poster board for a prototype. After they had figured out the angle, they made the permanent ramp using 1/4th inch lexan, and 1/8th inch lexan. They took the prototype as a guide, and placed the 1/8th inch lexan on top of it. Then, they used the heat gun to melt the lexan in the middle, and molded it to the prototype to get the same exact angle the poster board had. Then, they connected the ramp to two pieces of lexan that were connected by an aluminum piece of angle. After they were done with the first shooter, they started working on another, for the other side of the robot.

We still needed bumpers for the robot, so we quickly decided on black fabric for the bumpers. We came to this decision because our team colors are blue (the drivetrain), silver (unpainted metal), and black (inside of the wheels, and drawer liner). The back bumpers were made first so when we tested the robot, we could simulate real turning situations.

Go to week 2 - Return to the 2009 build page - Go to week 4