Day 9: Intake Improvements and new sketches

Intake Improvements

We begin iteration on the intake to get it performing the way we need.

We changed the bar behind the intake from a 2x1 to a 1x1 which made it have to pull the note up much less and it now has a direct path into the robot where we will have a ramp to feed it up into the other mechanisms.

The biggest iteration step was changing the gap between the rollers from 1.375” to 1.75”. The original CAD had the rollers at 1.125” instead of the 1.25” OD that they are so we were compressing far too much. We laser cut a small plate to let us match drill a new hole for the top roller and the intake is working much better.

Video

Tomorrow we will have new silicone rubber on the middle of the top tube, and 3D-printed wedges/ramps on the sides near the swerve module to help direct the note into the center.

New Design Sketches

As we work through the design and prototype build we continue to optimize. We kept trying to find a better solution for mounting the launcher pivot and powering it and in the earlier designs they kept being blocked by the elevator. We had other issues with the design in the complexity of the feed system and how far we’d need to pivot our launcher to accomplish the handoff to the amp-trap mechanism.

So we went through a lot of discussion and looked at other designs and our past concepts and sketches. We decided to go back to using rollers to change the notes direction and send the note up the back of the elevator without going through the launcher first. The amp-trap motor and feeder motor will work together to choose to either send the note to the launcher or to the amp-trap at the top of the elevator.

Here is a sketch of the new concept

The launcher pivots separately from the feeder which is something we were trying to avoid but the amount of bend in the note at any of our launch angles should be minimal enough that we believe it will be able to get it consistent. 

This has a few advantages over the previous plan. The launcher only tilts to its launch angles. The amp-trap mechanism and the launcher can be designed independently from each other. The feed from the intake should be consistent and quickly grabbed by the amp-trap roller. We believe we’ll be able to mount gas springs (or other counterbalance techniques)  to the launcher to help balance the load and remove some backlash.