The Mistake

Cuttin' stuff. Forward progress.
Oh wait! This was our Help Hub in action!
Team 4089 called on us to help manufacture some parts, so we gladly helped out!

Everyone makes mistakes at some point. We as a team have failed and err'ed and walked down dead end paths many, many times so far this season. What's important for us is recognizing early that a mistake was made, what it was, and moving forward. (Software makes the most mistakes. I threatened to take the 'backspace' key away from our lead programmer and he made quite a face! :-D) We are getting deep into build season, and if we make more mistakes now, we lose more precious time.

Monday night we had a meeting - we're behind, we've made mistakes. We need to really check ourselves, avoid distractions, move fast, and remove the opportunity for mistakes. It's a big ask for any team. Throughout the week, the team has continued progress, continued the usual fun, music, and banter, but has shown a new underlying focus and vigor.

Someone's quote that I've seen somewhere on Chief Delphi - "if you don't have time to do it right, how will you have time to do it twice?"

Check yo' self. (Bro.) (Sis.) (I'm super hip.)

Mistakes

So, what types of mistakes have we made? Some manufacturing. Some process. Lots of little issues in CAD. Let's talk about spacers, as a fun example

Stand-offs are funny little things. For our indexer we have a hand-full of them. Precision parts, identical length to one another to keep the plates equidistant. We made the first one, checked it several, several times. Agreed it was correct and then went to manufacture 6 more.

Don't know how this happened....

Yeah. That type of mistake - taking a mill for a full working night - was not absolutely terrible, but definitely not helpful. Too many of those mistakes can become costly from a manufacturing standpoint - we make most of our parts here in house. (More details later!) Fortunately, for these specific stand-offs, they have been re-cut and the new set is perfect*!

No mistakes on these! (I truly hope...)

Bottlenecks

Our second issue was more a process issue. Our moving to OnShape has helped increase our speed, productivity, and integration. No more "oh, you're on the previous version, that's all changed" moments. So, more parts, more complex parts, and again, we cut all (maybe all? maybe just like, 95% of them...) in house. And most we need to CAM before we can cut.

We started CAM-ing parts, and immediately ran into our next bottleneck. We had pieces that could be cut on the mill, several to be cut on the router, some smaller parts for the knee mill, BUT - we had only one CAM license. Oops. One student, preparing one sheet at a time. This was not good.

(Late Edit - I made a mistake! Lol. Direct from head coach: "Technically we do have more than one CAM license, and Solidworks licenses too, we just don't have more computers that can run Solidworks at a reasonable speed. So there's only the one computer with it set up. With no chair... This is fine ;) " Oops, sorry coach!)

One computer running CAM for 5 designers... Not good...

Fortunately, the fix was pretty easy. Fusion 360, another Autodesk product, was quickly set up, and with student editions available, we were able to get multiple designers up and running. Next problem became immediately obvious - training a new tool in season. As of right now, this is an on-going process, but we are making progress and getting more parts prepared than we had been previously!

The Dream Team

I mentioned a few times how we can bottleneck ourselves. We have a great number of sponsors who supply donations, services, and mentors, however, we don't have a manufacturing supplier. We have the computers and machines in our shop that bring us from a black (ha, I'm going to keep that typo. Supposed to be 'blank' but, we like black here. I'm going to go paint a whiteboard black.) whiteboard to a complete, competition ready robot. Students use their own personal laptops to run Onshape (and now Fusion 360), and the machine code gets run on a number of machines. Here's what we have in our lab!

Note: I'm not a mechanical or machining mentor so, I'm asking people about the names and specific functions of these. This is a good thing otherwise you'd get a list of pictures saying "This cuts stuff. Make sure you don't leave the wrench in the top." (OK, I know more than that, but, writer's choice, artistic freedom, blah blah blah....)

Sharp CNC Mill

Looking.... Sharp....

We've got two - one has 3-axis CNC while the other is essentially manual with measurement. We use these for most of our tubes, facing stock to exact dimensions, pocketing, lightening, hole-y-ing, all the usual stuff. 

Laguna Table Router

This machine is pretty much what makes our entire process function. This CNC router has a 4' x 8' bed, can be used for metal, plastic, and wood, and is used in nearly every step of our process from prototyping to final robot parts. While it has something ~6" of Z-axis travel, the majority of the work is cutting intricate contours or pockets across flat surfaces. Our belly-pan, gussets, plates, and more were all cut on this machine.

Tormach 440

The same, but smaller. Like a baby Yoda version of the Sharp.

Just like the Sharp CNC's, only a little smaller. In the past we used this to churn out a number of smaller parts - bearing captures, plates smaller than 8", and the like. This year, most likely due to CAM bottlenecking, we haven't used it as much.

Tormach 15L Lathe

Outside of the bandsaw (Ah! i forgot to take a picture of the bandsaw. Well, picture... a bandsaw. We have one.) Anywho, outside of the bandsaw, the lathe is pretty much the only tool we have to do specialized shafts. It can run CNC programs, do ring grooves, and... other stuff that you'd do for shafts.

DeWalt Chop Saw

Choppy McChopface

Really the most important workhouse in the lab. Used on pretty much every prototype, field element, summer project and more. This chop saw has an extended cutting range, and up to 60* dual axis rotation for fun - er - important work! Currently, we use a multi-material blade for cutting wood, PVC, and aluminum.

Markforged 3D Printer

These things run all night. Literally.

New this year are three 3D printers. We have used these to print parts, part templates, vectored intake wheels, spacers, pulleys, fittings, and more. So many of the small, hard to manufacture at scale parts have now become easy with these printers. The quality is much better than any previous printers we have used, and the parts that come out are tough enough to endure drilling, tapping, press-fitting, and more.

But that's not all!

Also, we have a band saw. And some hand drills. And a drill press, arbor press, tapping tools, hammers, wrenches, oh so many electrical crimping tools, and well, I'm not going to list them all that would lead to a silly long blog post, and I don't do those. ... Anymore....

Wait - one more fun story before I forget - Most of the items listed above (except the printers and chop saw) are all plugged in on the same power circuit. Definitely never becomes an issue when we start running 3 or 4 machines at a time... most definitely not. This is fine.

More Work, More Fun

Chairman's

This week we also celebrated submitting our 2020 Chairman's Submission. We had a number of students and mentors working late Wednesday night to finish addressing all the edits, comments, and thoughts. Thursday we celebrated with cake! Even in the midst of struggle with the robot, I think it's important that we take time to celebrate accomplishments when they happen. It's easy to criticize, and comment when things are late. How about celebrating when your first piece of metal is cut? (We did! ... On Slack...)

I arrived late, but the cake was not a lie!

Unveiling

Upcoming, next Saturday (Feb 15th 6-9pm Pacific, save the date!) will be our annual Unveiling Event! Last years was sadly snowed out, so we need to make it bigger and better this year! Our unveiling event is about some social fun, a chance to take a breath before competition, and a night to just talk robots. We'll be showing off our current robot and status, strategic decisions, and more. We have a over a dozen local teams joining us in person, many bringing their robots!

Once again we will be live streaming the event for any and all to view. If any teams want to send a video to be played at the event and be a part of the action, send a note to businessteam4911@gmail.com! We don't have the live stream link at the moment, but we will likely use Discord or Twitch to stream. Check the details at https://cyberknights4911.com/unveiling-event!

Naming

We also took some time for a very important team topic. Voting on the robot name. Open Google poll. Cast as many votes as you like. Naturally, our software team found a bot and submitted a few hundred responses in seconds. Also, despite me adding a note about robot name to this blog, we haven't picked the final name yet. So, just like all of us, you too must wait. Patience. You must learn patience!

Doubly-fitting - the software team's response bot submitted the name 'Celery' a few hundred times.
Also, apparently all our project lead students get random awkward pictures taken of them.
Mission accomplished.

"I would leave all of you for a dog" - Project Lead Student. Pictured above eating celery.

-B