Day 14: Ramping Up Production

We really started getting into the construction of our versaframe based chassis today. Many of the parts we are 3D printing or CNC routing for the prototype to make sure we like everything before we purchase some of the pieces.

The above image shows some of the cutouts we have made from a sheet of ABS, it cuts very nicely and it's fast for prototyping and test fitting.

We've built up both our drive rails and we'll have them chained up and hopefully assembled tomorrow. We have to cut a few more gussets and make a few more mounts but we should have something driving sometime on Sunday. The versachassis system has been very easy to get started with. Something simple for a drive base will make our robot really reliable. We're planning to add an H-drive colson wheel that we should be able to mount fully over the weekend as well.

One of our special projects this season has been the tape measure based recycling container hook system. We've been iterating on it and working to make sure we can quickly acquire a few of the containers. Today we added a spool and string to allow for a stronger pull back.

We are almost finished with our electronics layout in Solidworks and we'll be putting that on the router in tomorrow afternoon to mount to our test chassis.

Tomorrow we have our friends the Discobots working with us in our shop.

- Spectrum

"The best way to get the most out of engineers is to surround them with other great engineers." - Felix Salmon