Authors: Ritik Mishra
Single Flywheel
Yesterday, we finished the wooden parts of our makeshift hood. Today, we attached the wood profiles to the 80/20 frame. We also stole some plastic from the defunct turntable prototype. This plastic was form-fitted to the wooden hood profile in order to make the hood solid across its entire width, and attached to the wood using small screws. One problem that we had was that the hood would flex a lot near the front edge. To stop it from flexing, we jammed a thin aluminum bar near the end between the plastic and the wood.
We were also able to test its shooting ability. Hopefully, we can test accuracy tomorrow.
One thing that we will need to experiment with is the impact of the safety wire on accuracy. Safety wire is metal wire that is wrapped around the wheels to stop them from expanding too much when they are spun at high speeds. However, during our testing, the safety wire on one of the two wheels came right off. We noticed that with the safety wire, the wheel still expands a fair amount, especially around the edges.
One thing that we noticed is that the balls seemed to create dust when they went through the flywheel. It seems to be a mix of yellow and black, which might occur if the wheel was also shedding material.
L tunnel
Today, we completed the second iteration of the L tunnel ball management system. All 3 of the boxes were attached together using two long bars, and polycord was welded around the pulleys.
The ball seems to get stuck just after the corner, either because there is too much compression or not enough contact with the polycord. The polycord is also slipping a lot, which is another problem. One thing should help is shortening their total length.
Rotary OBA
It got CADded!
Parallel Bars OBA
Last night, this prototype was damaged during cleanup. Today, it was made sturdier, and the roller bars were completely integrated into the design. It is ready to test, which should ideally get done tomorrow.
Quote of the day: “Discussion is always good, most of the time” — Ryan Mikol, Scouting and Strategy Lead