Pulleys and Bearings

Apologies for the kind of lame blog title and post tonight. It was a late night of working. The main projects for today were the conveyer, cleaning the robot room, and the mascot feet. A slightly frustrating day because we did not get the parts that we needed to really continue our work. So there was kind of a lot of time spent looking around for something to do.

The big project was finishing the conveyer or gatherer system. We made the whole thing out of lexan earlier and focused our energy today on the pulleys and belts. The problem was that we did not have enough v-belt pulleys. So Bryce and Bydlon did a tour of Alexandria looking for pulleys. They visited 5 different part stores in the area but had no luck finding enough. Luckily, Industrial Farm and Supply could order some and get them in by Friday. Ryan decided to do as much as possible without all of the pulleys so he, along with some help, drilled all of the holes for the steel rods that the pulley will connect to. He hooked it up so that there was one belt on each level which at least allows us to set up the whole conveyer system (though on Friday, we will have to take it apart and put all the belts on). This was significant progress after a kind of depressing earlier part of the afternoon. We also put a new motor on the horn (bridge angler) and wired it all up so we can use it with the drive station.

Jesse, Kacy, and Steph finished the feet of the mascot. They started doing the base spary painting of black as well. They will look awesome (as the rest of the mascot stuff already does).

Colin and Megan worked on autonomous mode and programming in a range finder so that the robot will automatically know how to adjust the shooter. Lots of physics and math involved.

Bryce and Jordan completely cleaned up and out the robot room. IT LOOKS GREAT! We all forgot how big the room was with all of our stuff in there. Cleaning is one of those jobs that people don't like to do but is really necessary.

Jenna started working on a new team poster that we can take to events. She picked out pictures to put on it and made a general design.

Lots of things accomplished but also discouraging waiting on parts and having things not work perfectly. The team still powered through. More work to be done tomorrow: finishing the conveyer and mounting the shooter (hopefully).