Day 8 – Testing the Flywheel (1/11/2020)

Authors: Andrew Georgioff, Ritik Mishra, Danny Georgioff

Introduction

Today was Isaac Ash’s birthday. He is our senior engineering captain. Happy birthday, Isaac!

Also, today, one of the FTC teams at the middle school had their league qualifier. Sadly, they were ranked 20th of 25 and did not make it to state. Fortunately, many of the team members are looking forward to joining Talon.

Rotary OBA with Vectored Intake Wheels

The rotary OBA was tested using 2” mecanum wheels on hex shafts. The 3D printed mecanum wheels came apart when we spun the hex shaft at the top speed of the drills (parts of them flew across the room). As a result of this we swapped to 4 inch mecanum wheels for now.

Double Flywheel testing

We tested the accuracy of our double flywheel prototype’s accuracy today. We tested the spread of the flywheel and at first it had a lot of spread. We figured much of this spread was likely due to variance in how the ball entered the flywheel. We made a basic wooden ramp to make this factor more consistent and it largely reduced the spread. After this we rebuilt it with 80-20 near the end to make it sturdier. After this we tested it with a basic target and it achieved around 75% accuracy from 35 feet away.

Above: The red spots are the results before the guide, the blue spots are the results after the guide. 

Above: A guide added to stabilize testing

Quote of the day: “I am only pro-clams” — Ravisha Jaiswal, business captain