Written By: Ally L
The robot is in so many pieces.
Thursday was intake repair day for the driver’s test and off-season competitions coming up. An intake plate was cracked and needed replacing.
This fix is usually:
- -remove wheels, bolts from 1 side of intake
- -remove 2 bolts holding intake in
- -lever intake out carefully with crowbar
That is not what happened.
As usual, we:
- -removed wheels, bolts from 1 side
- -removed 2 bolts holding intake in
- -lever one side of the intake out easily
But the other side could not move.
“That’s okay!” we thought, “we can just force it out of that side with a hammer. We’ll just remove the swerve module on that side really quickly!”
But no. The swerve module screws were stripped. They didn’t leave with the screw extraction tool, vampliers, or a hammer and a larger hex. The first stripped bolt, we drilled through the bolt head to get it off. The other, we were able to dremel a slot for a flathead screwdriver and remove it.
“Finally!” we rejoiced, “we can fix the intake!”
But hammering on the hex didn’t work. Using crowbars and shims to make sure the plate couldn’t move DIDN’T HELP.
We looked at the hex very carefully.
The hex shaft and the bearing were misaligned. In some previous fix, the hex shaft had been forced into the bearing at the wrong orientation and is now impossible to remove from the bearing.
Oh goody, poor intake.
Since we knew the hex was now dead to the world, we cut the intake shaft so that we didn’t mess up more of the intake while we figured out the horrifying mess that was this fix.
We tried hammering out the bearing. We tried heating the metal and prying it out. There was a pile of crowbars on the floor and the metal was burning hot.
That didn’t work. All that we’d done was remove the outer protective layer on one side of the bearing.
“This is fine.” We said.
We took snips to the inside of the bearing and tore it apart while it was still on the robot. Finally, finally, the hexshaft was out.
Problem!
The outside of the bearing was STILL IN THE PLATE. As usual, none of our hammers, pliers, crowbars, or tools could remove it.
So, we took a dremel and cut the bearing in half while it was inside the plate.
Finally, finally, the intake was removed from the robot.
Then the room ended.
Shameless Self-Promotion, Intake Some New Info
It’s time to learn about an upcoming event! Talon is hosting our largest fundraiser of the year. That’s right, it’s Robots and Rotini time!! If you are free on November 8th from 5:00-7:00, you should totally check out this web page to learn more: https://team2502.com/robots-and-rotini/
Stay Connected With Us During The Entire Season!
If you want to stay connected with the team during the entire season, feel free to check out our social media pages: