Roughly Smooth: Week 7: All Together

Week 7

Everything is really starting to come together! Week 7 started our frantic and frenetic competition prep. The robot is pretty much complete, and we're very in the weeds on the details. Time for a whiteboard! We wrote our "burndown" list on the board and started working our way through the items. Mechanical finishing touches on the elevator, lots of electrical completion, tidying, mock inspection to make sure we are fully legal to play, and of course software controls and testing.

It was a long list.

At the end of the week, there's still a few things left.

This is fine?

Until now, all our wires to the elevator were just hanging loose. This week we tidied them into a neat bundle with predictable movement as the elevator slides up and down.

Gotta start somewhere. Then add zip-ties.

Sharp edges are good on a knife, but not good on the edge of a robot. We spent some time filing and Dremel-ing down points and edges for safety.

Sounded like a dentist's office while we were Dremel-ing.

No more wood! Our first- wait, second, third? intake was still made from wood, and would not survive the competition field. With our final geometry, some new belts and pulleys, we had a nice, clean, taught plastic intake. At this thickness of material, the plastic plates will flex and bend, but <hopefully> not snap, allowing us to continue playing through any hard hits.

Third intake is the charm!

Just like that, the elevator is complete, the new intake installed, and the mechanical burndown list started getting crossed off quickly.

Getting closer to competition ready!

Electrical and pneumatics got tidied up next. Some of the hardest issues to diagnose are electrical, so clean wire runs and accessible status lights are super helpful. (Please ignore the fact that we taped over all the RoboRio status lights and reset buttons on our first effort...)