FTC 7314 Engineering Notebook 2014-11-03

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Competition Season Meeting

Meeting Date Meeting Time Location Attendees
11-03-14 6pm-9pm TCHS Brandywine Laura, Nick, Braden, Akhila, Justin, Josh, Brad, Amal, CJ


Tasks Reflections
Review Ramp Riot
  • On Saturday, we all had a very exciting day. We won our first tournament! It was a lot of fun, but not everything was perfect.
  • As a team, we started our meeting today with discussing what went right at the tournament.
  • Then, we talked about what went wrong, so we could learn from our mistakes.
  • Finally, we discussed what we still need to do before December 6th, our first qualifier. There is a lot to do, so we split into groups for various projects.
Putting Holes in Linear Slide Connectors
  • Justin, Josh, and Andrew worked with the mill to put holes in the connectors for screws despite the mill not working at all and needing two mentors with good skill in the mill to fix it, but in the end they finished all of them in ten minutes.
  • Josh, Justin, and Andrew finished drilling all of the holes for the sliders even with problems from the mill.
Center of Gravity Solution
  • Brad and Braden brainstormed on ways to make the enter of gravity lower, and worked out three solutions; widen the wheels, lower the top part, or add more weight to the base.
  • They were able to find a better way to balance the center of gravity.
Shooter Mechanism
  • Laura and Akhila started off the meeting with the prospects of successfully prototyping a shooter mechanism. They took the previous idea of a whacker and started sketching some ideas. The first idea involved the ball moving into the tube through the side, the whacker hitting it, and the ball continuing on its same path up the tube. The second was similar, but involved the ball going in through a different direction, and the tube curving up through a different plane. Unfortunately, halfway through the meeting, they found that the original prototype that they had been working on prior was misplaced, and resorted to working on a goal grabber design instead.
Goal Grabber Discussion
  • Our very last minute goal grabber design for Ramp Riot did not work as well as we need a goal grabber to work in the future, so we will need to rethink it.
  • Laura and Akhila started discussing different ideas for a better design. Before Ramp Riot, the team as a whole discussed possibly having a "piston" motion, or having a goal grabber move perpendicular to the ground, not tangent to the base. This would be accomplished with a worm gear. In the coming weeks, we will continue to develop this idea further.


Recorded by: Date: Journal Editor: Amal Ronak Date: 11/29/14