Day #10 – 1/12/2015 – VEX Swerve Finalized

Lab opening time: 1:30 pm 

Today the final touches were put on the swerve module and the swerve was sent over to the CAM (Computer-Aided Manufacturing) team to start getting the parts ready for production.

The prototyping team was able to place the elevator frame, the elevator carriage and the metal and wooden forks together into one working piece. Unfortunately, the elevator prototype was not very sturdy because it was made out of 3D printed parts but the prototyping crew was able to work around the limitations and got the elevator back up and running. They also worked on re-mounting the intake rollers so that the rollers could pivot outwards instead of up and down so that the rollers don’t get in the way of the forks.

Photo Jan 12, 5 16 00 PM
Meet working on re-positioning the intake rollers
Photo Jan 12, 4 06 05 PM
Elevator prototype.

The programming team was able to make adjustments on the VEX swerve so that the VEX swerve was easier to control and faster (see video below to see the swerve in action.) John, a new programmer, also worked on programming old robots to test out his programming skills.

The business team continued working on thank you letters and a sponsorship booklet. The team also opened a new e-reader that would allow the business team to show potential sponsors a slideshow of what team 696 does. However, the e-reader does not seem to charge well and may not even have a slideshow feature.

Since Cynthia is done with the swerve module, she started working on the frame of the robot and so far the frame is looking great. There are still questions that need to be answered like how far in the tote will go into the robot, whether the intake rollers need to be mounted outside of transport configuration and how the prototyping team can make the autocanner deploy and bring the recycling containers back in just one move.

Frame_assembly
CAD design of robot frame.

One team that has not been mentioned on this blog but is an important part of the team is Matlab. Matlab is currently working on a document that calculates the torque applied to the elevator pulley when the cable is wound around the pulley and when the cable is loose. Results to come soon.

Lab closing time: 7:00 PM.