Almost to the finish!

With only a week and a half left until the competition, time has become a big constraint. We have almost all our parts made, but still have to drill a lot of holes using the mill. We have 4 hours of mill time tomorrow, so it should be all finished. We have already used the waterjet and Andy and Ed are masters at the laser cutter.

We still have had some last minute CAD changes, but we are hoping to assemble everything during lab on Wednesday. We need one of our metal motors (which the 250 people may or may not have ordered yet) and our second set of treads (which we have ordered and are waiting to come in) before we can test our machine. Car RamRod is going to be amazing and blow the competition out of north campus.

Changes!

We have made 5 parts! Yay! We are currently working on finishing our CAD for our entire machine. We now have a top, which looks like a castle. We had to change the back from 1/4 aluminum to 1/16 aluminum because we wouldn't have enough 1/4 aluminum otherwise. (We changed our sides to be 1/4 aluminum so we could thread holes to put gears in for our treads.). I am loving the idea of the treads. Life is so much easier with them.


Team RamRod is planning a movie night (to watch Super Troopers) in honor of our team name. It will not happen until after the competition, so we will have time.

Calendar

Schedule Availible at:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Arjx-CZ8M8gZdHFHZ0ktU2pmN2d3REVFRVBUdnY2b3c&pli=1#gid=0

Design Update

We are changing our original design. Instead of having large wheels, we will use a tread (similar to tanks from WWI). These treads will allow us to lower the base of the machine, so picking up balls will be easier. Also, we are lowering the angle of the base. In the first image, it went up almost 4-5 inches. We are thinking about putting the angle closer to 10-15 degrees. Another change is the size of the machine itself. We are going to make it more of a 6 in x 6 in square. This will make it easier to move up the stairs.