FTC 7314 Engineering Notebook 2014-09-29

Competition Season Meeting

Meeting Date	Meeting Time	Location	Attendees
9/29/14	6pm-9pm	TCHS Brandywine	Nick, Laura, Akhila, CJ, Trevor, Josh, Justin, Amal, Morgan

Tasks	Reflections
Programming the Robot	Amal learned how to program the robot using mentor Julie's Mac and CJ's laptop. He also learned that numbers and variables control the servo and help the robot transport items. Amal and CJ were also helping to fix the wheel that broke on the chassis. Amal, Trevor, CJ, and Josh also drive the robot.
Solidworks	Josh worked with Mentor Andrew to improve upon the linear slide by replacing makeshift parts with the parts that would be used in real life. Unfortunately, they had some bad luck when it came to using Solidworks. The program broke twice and a video that we watched froze the computer, but we did what we set out to do.
Practicing Driving	Trevor worked with Josh on driving the robot. Trevor gave him various instructions so that he could get a feel for driving the robot and listening to commands. He did tasks such as driving around the center goal and getting rolling goals into specific areas and onto ramps. He completed these tasks exceptionally well for driving for the first time with tank drive. CJ drove the robot as well and demonstrated driving to the newer members of the team. He also tried new ways to drive and avoid obstacles to the robot.
Shooter Mechanism	Akhila and Laura worked again on the shooter mechanism. Last week, it was revealed that they could not use a motor without a gear box, which is what had been in use for weeks prior. They tried this week to use the same idea, but with a gear box, and it was clear the mechanism would not work. They discussed new ideas, and started prototyping one of them. One of the alternate ideas was a conveyor that had been worked on for the first two weeks. This design still has lots of kinks that have to be worked out, but it is a possibility. A faster lift might be better, though. Another idea is to use the elastic potential energy of surgical tubing or a spring to "whack" the balls up the tube. As Mentor Gary says, "When in doubt; whack it!" After discussing the implementation of the "whacking" model, a new idea was proposed. We could attach a spring to a wheel, which, as it spun, would build up tension in the spring. When the spring continued past the bottom of the wheel, the elastic potential energy would cause the wheel to spin faster, giving us a way to launch the ball. This idea is basically an elegant "whacker", so we decided to start by prototyping a "whacker", to see if we could realistically gain enough elastic potential energy to launch the ball 48". We began the prototyping by dismantling the frame used for the shooter, and adapting it for the "whacker". a few of the screws were stripped in the frame, so it took a little longer than expected. Next meeting, they should be able to finish up the frame, and test a very simple whacker.