Day 35: Launching Better

We spent the day gathering all the parts for the competition robot. We still don't have the sheet metal back yet but that should be Monday. We want to have everything else ready to go when we get it back, and it should go together like a big Lego set.

We also replaced the belt on our shooter with sprockets and chain. We now have 2 CIMs and 2 BB775s driving a 5.33:1 VEXpro gearbox, that has a 12 tooth sprocket driving at 26 tooth sprocket that share a shaft with 2 15 tooth sprockets that drive 26 tooth sprockets on each arm of the shooter. Our final gear ratio is right at about 20:1. With the chain we have to be much more careful not to stall the motors into a hard stop.

We also started testing different release angles by adding a bar to the launcher arm at different points. This dramatically alters our shot trajectory and can provide us a much further shot. We're going to play with this more to find the optimal position.

A few minor things as well, we got more air tanks and the real mounting brackets from Pneuaire, we mounted them on the practice bot and had to modify the mounts slightly to make them work the way we wanted. We also put on the 3D printed pot adapter for the launcher and that didn't work as well as the makeshift one we had before. We'll have redesign a bit to make sure that it's very robust. We changed the outward angle of the wings by adding a small spacer to the cylinders, which prevents them from pulling any further out.

Here is a quick video of us testing the ability to drive with two balls. I wonder why we would want to do that?

- Spectrum

“When in doubt, always err on the side of generosity!” - Ping Fu