Throughout the week, the robot’s electronics were repositioned to clean up space so that we would know approximately how much space was available for a sweeper and shooter.
From the first scrimmage, the cap ball mechanism had several main problems:
- Gears would become unaligned when exposed to lots of torque and were extremely difficult to put back in the right place
- The cap ball would escape the claws’ grasps when the robot moved fast
- The entire mechanism was loosely attached to the linear lift, and could easily be tilted upwards or downwards around 5 degrees
Additionally, this mechanism worked 1 out of 5 attempts during official games at our first scrimmage.
The new cap ball mechanism was focused on fixing these main issues. For a stronger grip, it will use a small to large gear ratio for extra torque (even though this will make it outside 18 inches in the current chassis). For the unaligned gears, the gears will be all attached through the Tetrix channel holes that match perfectly and tightly. For the occasional tilting of the entire mechanism, the mechanism will use a longer channel to attach onto the linear lift to prevent tilting and increase secureness.
Cons of the new mechanism:
- More spacious
- Heavier (but this can also be good since the mechanism will go all the way down now, so there is a consistent starting position)
- The grip is stronger, but the claws are higher up (spacing constraints), which could lead to loose holds (testing needed)
The robot chassis will be switched to an Actobotics based chassis because:
- Extremely secure hubs on the motors
- Stronger
- More precise and consistent parts
- A little more spacious in some places
- Tighter collars on axles
There were very simple tests on a wheel based shooter:
Although a wheel based shooter is definitely capable of shooting a ball, this setup wasn’t not able to shoot a ball, it could only roll the ball slightly. Distance between the wheel and other surface need to be tested, along with the speed of the wheel, wheel material, number of wheels, and wheel diameter.
At the same time the catapult shooter is underwent testing throughout this Thanksgiving break:
The catapult shooter has multiple things that affect it, including the counterweight or the tension on the other size, and the length of the piece that is rotating. We found that the longer the arm that shot, the more tension was required on the other side of the arm. The rotating joint, that we tested earlier this season was brought back to be able to pull the arm of the catapult back and release it with one motor.
