Build Day 19: 4 weeks left till tools down

We made a huge amount of progress today because the final shipment of mechanical parts arrived. 

We were able to mount the upper bars that support the shooter assembly and we made the first version of the shooter hood. The shooter motor was also attached today. 

We finished the construction of the rollers and the initial polycord bands as well. Tomorrow we should be able to attach everything and test the collector/elevator. The Lexan panel for the back of the collector still needs a bit of work to make it hold the curves that we want, but that shouldn't take to much time tomorrow.

We also examined our 775 motor for a case short today and it checked out okay. The motor is insulated from the frame, a nice feature of all the spray paint. Though we may still move it to a Lexan mount just in case. After reading enough about the motors on ChiefDelphi, it seems that a lot of teams have had problems but a lot of others have used them with out fail. They make our design far easier to implement because of their lower RPM compared to 550s. (read more about the problem here)

Middle of next week we should be driving and shooting. (Fingers crossed)

- Allen Gregory

"I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday." - Abraham Lincoln