Friday 11/14

Attendance: Nolan, Kyler, Travis, Gabe

We had a small group today, Chris wasn't feeling well and went home to work on the blog intead, and Ben had too much homework. During the meeting, we finished the ramp (we still need to calibrate it though) and had some good ideas for the robot.


Nolan's comments:
We've found that if we double the servos at the base of the arm, the "dual-stage arm" is no longer neccessary. Instead, we are now planning an arm that has an autobalancing feature, keeping the puck trough level as the arm supporting it moves up and down. This mode would be initiated by a button, and cancelled as soon as the trough control joystick is moved.
We also found that using the tubes for the trough caused the pucks to stick, so we're going to run two pieces of one-by from the old VEX kit across the top of the trough (where the tubes were, though with mores space due to the smaller width of the one-by in comparison) and use it as a mounting point for a polycarbonate trough.


Kyler's comments: I took apart one arm and rebuilt it with a different design. We are putting one-by on the sides of the trough and putting aluminum or polycarbonate for the main part of the trough. Aluminum isgoing to be easier to bend but it will be heavier, and polycarbonate is going lighter but harder to bend and keep in one piece.


Gabe's comments:
Today I drilled holes and screwed the ramp parts together and attached the ramp to the rest of the course.


Travis' comments: today Gabe and me finished the ramp by drilling the holes to connect to the pvc pipe so the ramp will not move around a lot and i drilled all the holes but two gabe drilled the other.