Build Day 11: Only 35 days left

I knew today was going to be light because all our parts are coming in tomorrow. Our main focus was working on the shooter prototype. The last time we tested we were only getting about 8ft or so. Today was a drastic improvement we were able to shoot about 25ft from a very long starting height and an imperfect angle. I'll try to get video linked from today but it hasn't been uploaded yet. We still have a ways to go to before we can design the real thing.

We continued to manufacture a few of the parts we know will be on the robot, and we also painted more stuff before we start assembly. We began bumper construction today, this year's design is going to have two C shaped bumpers so they should be quick and easy to swap. 

We're working on the camera code in Java and it looks like this is giving everyone head aches. Normally if they release a library for one environment they release it for all of them; but this year only LabVIEW has the nice prepacked rectangle tracking code. Hopefully they'll be a library update in the near future. In the mean time we are still getting used to the new command and subsystem structure that was implemented this year. It's a great improvement but it still seems to have its bugs or maybe just nuances.

Tomorrow we start roller construction and we get our 0673 FisherPrice motors and CIM-sim for the shooter.

We're pushing for a week 4 robot if we can get it. The design of the shooter assembly still needs to be finished but I think we have all the parts we will need for that no matter what we design. 

Question for anyone reading, what would be the easiest way to ream a 1" hole to 1.125" for a bearing seat in the end of a plastic tube without a mill or lathe? It doesn't need to be a perfect press fit.

Also in case anyone is wondering I haven't posted new CAD shots because the design hasn't changed much since the last one, we've added a few bracket here and there but we're sticking with that design for the most part.

- Allen Gregory

"Everything is practice." — Pelé