Freight Frenzy Meeting #4

Meeting 4

DATE : 10/16/21

Agenda: Drive the base and Prototype an Arm

Attendees: Coach Cynde, Sean Pakros, Jessica Hawkinson, Zeke Humber and Nate Humber

Objectives: Connect the motors to the control hub to test our drive train and prototype an arm

Notes: We discussed the importance of the FTC forum and that team mates need to be checking it weekly to see about rule clarifications.

Sean has a team freight element idea based on the capstone from last year and is working on a prototype in Fusion 360. He will work on the design for team approval.

Zeke shared a video of a servo claw that we could 3D print and use for the robot. This brought up further discussion and debate about what would be more effective a claw or an intake cup. We discussed that the ball and square freight pieces are two different heights and widths so the attachment must be able to handle both. We played with some existing spinner wheels that the team had and a couple new spinners that coach ordered from Andy Mark to see how we could use the intake box. We decided to prototype both to test and determine which would be better since we also want to be able to cap the hub. Nate began prototyping one in cardboard with an overhead spinner. Zeke created one with a larger spinner and attached a motor to test it. The overhead spinner was not efficient at intaking both the block and ball and even had issues with the blocks. We 

Zeke showed us a video of a 2 gear claw that we could 3D print. We created one with the smaller metal frames we had and some old Pitsco gears and decided that this is the best way to grab and deliver the freight and our team freight. We wrapped them with silicone from heat trivets for better grip.

Nate spent time testing out the Freight hubs and putting together a strategy plan. We created a video of his strategy plan and posted it to out Facebook page.

We discussed different types of arms and which arms might be best for our robot - jointed, elevator and cascading and placement on the robot to reach our 20 inches to cap the hub. We made some measurements and talked about past arms and strain on the motors from using the wrong worm gears. Sean showed some pictures from past engineering notebooks.

We attached the electronics and tested our new base and realized a couple of the mecanum wheels were reversed, so we corrected them.

Nate studied the freight hub and created a strategy for the best placement of the freight elements into the hub. We then created a short video of his strategy that we loaded to our Facebook page.