It Works!

So, folks, our machine was actually up and running in the arena today! This makes the effort of the past (crazy) week much more worthwhile. Most of this week was spent manufacturing the parts of our machine which hadn't been finished the week before--axle mounting brackets, axles, the chassis plate, and arm pin plates (which guide our machine's arm as it is driven up and down). We also mounted all of these manufactured parts to the chassis, mounted the motors, and completed the wiring today.

The manufacturing of our parts was fairly uneventful. The chassis was cut out of plywood with the laser cutter. This meant that it didn't require much post-cutting work, though determining proper hole placement in Solidworks was very time consuming. Our axle brackets are simple pieces of aluminum L-channel with holes milled into them, while the axles themselves are 1/4" shafts which have been turned down on the lathe to allow for e-ring clips and other hardware, like set-screws. We did run out of 1/4" aluminum shaft material, though, so Travis managed to pick up some 1/4" steel.

Coupling our motors to driven shafts was a little difficult, mostly owing to bracket size (axle brackets interfered with flexible couplings). Thankfully, Dan was able to take these brackets home and grind two of them down significantly, which fixed the problem. The motors are coupled to the shafts with flexible tubing, pinned through with short peices of steel welding rod--a handy trick we picked up from another team. The wiring of the motors also was fairly smooth once we'd gotten the hang of the soldering iron. We believe that we've managed to wire our machine so that the wiring won't be vulnerable to attack, but that remains to be seen.

The hardest part now will be to learn to drive the machine with the existing controls. We did get in some drive practice today once our wiring was complete. The driving was erratic, but we hope to improve with practice and perform well at next Thursday's competition!