1/29/2014 Day 25: The Strength Test

Today was the beginning of figuring out whether or not the wooden gussets work/are sturdy enough to be on our robot.  As everything was prepared yesterday, it was just a matter of riveting everything together, testing, and deciding whether or not to wait for the metal gussets for both bots.

Shooter

Today, after we found the wooden gussets will work, we began cutting square tubing for the sides of the tower, which was just 2"x4" on the prototype, and cutting the conduit that runs along the top.  Not much happened again with the shooter because people were working on making the robot frame and the awards that were looming ahead (the Chairman's Award especially, as it was only 15 days away from being due, and hadn't had much work on it yet).

Intake

For the intake, we went ahead and cut out the tubing needed, and started drilling holes for mounting the motors and for attaching the gussets to hold everything together, but didn't get too far, as we waited to do the robot frame first to make sure the wood was good enough before moving on.

Drive Base

Today was a big day and moment of truth for our robot.  If the wooden gussets were to work, everything would resume and be on schedule, but if they ended up not being structurally sound enough, we would be delayed at least half a week, just from having to hand make the gussets out of sheet metal, or waiting for the gussets to be finished by TMM Precision.  We went ahead and riveted everything together, and the wooden gussets ended up working very very well, and was plenty strong enough to hold everything together for the frame, so that was our indicator that the wooden gussets were a okay.  We ended up getting most of the frame finished, and we were now set up to go ahead and drill whatever extra holes to mount stuff to the frame, which will be worked on tomorrow.  Below is the frame before any gussets were added to connect everything together.

Approximate times of working: 3:30 PM - 7:30 PM