Week 5
Feb 6 2021:
Extended Intake worked on mounting the cylinder bracket and adding slots to the side plates for pneumatic fitting clearance. The CAD team updated the side plates to accommodate the 1x1 tubing on top of the cylinder mount. They are anticipating the drawings will begin to be prepared on Monday.
The game design team worked on reviewing the flow of their game. They updated their scoring element point values. They also discovered some reference material from FIRST that provided the competition field Solidworks model that came with robots, reference people, carpet, and external guarding frame. The team reevaluated their model to include the examples from FIRST. They also refined dimensions of their game elements.
The manufacturing team sorted drill bits. They also worked on manufacturing brackets for the shooter assembly. The base frame was beginning to be cut when they realized the vise wasn't zeroed properly and they needed to restart. The mentors worked with the students to retram the vise. They were able to cut four 1x1 square tubes to length.
Feb 8 2021:
The quality assurance process has been created to communicate to all team members the status of parts and assemblies. The process incorporates our assembly drawings that feature an exploded view with a bill of materials that lists each part used in that assembly. Each line of the BOM is highlighted YELLOW for "In Progress". When a part reaches completion a BLUE highlighter covers the yellow mark to create a shade of GREEN that reflects the part is now completed. Other commercial, electrical, and pneumatic parts can be directly highlighted GREEN because they do not need to be manufactured.
The team has ramped up their manufacturing efforts. Students are working with the mill, lathe, drill press, belt sander, and bench grinder to complete parts. Students also utilized the 3D printer to create the ABS brackets, spacers, and gears.
Feb 9 2021:
Our other manufacturing team members were not as fortunate. They had cut 15 1x1 tubes to length at our last work session. While we were please to hear of their production, it later came to light that they didn't consider the reference dimension of the predrilled holes to be 0.50in as it showed in the drawing.
This reference dimension ensures that any predrilled holes that are used with the tubing is accounted for so that mounting holes will line up with other features that are designed to attach to those holes. This dimension is held to a tolerance of +-0.010. Meaning that the dimension would be considered to be ok if it fell within 0.510 - 0.490.
As a result we needed to recut the parts to length, and focus on the parts being faced to the desired dimension. While this is a short term painful lesson, we have learned to keep this in mind in the future.
We also contacted one of our area sponsors to powder coat our robot for this year. We have scheduled to meet with them on Friday because the students will not be in school for a teacher in-service day. Our struggles from today will result in less finished parts to be delivered and more machining operations to be done on parts that already have paint on them.
Our team learned a lot of machining lessons the hard way today. One of our parts was nearly manufactured incorrectly because our student designer used the "measure" feature in Solidworks for a dimension, rather than using the manufacturer's drawing. Upon review of the manufacturer's drawing the student realized their mistake when measuring and needed to correct the drawing. We were fortunate to catch this mistake because the spacing of the part was irregular from our typical measurements. Due to the irregularity we decided to review the parts designed purpose and understand where the dimension came from.
We finished our work session by cutting parts on the laser. This helped us verify our hole alignment for our extended intake assembly. This can also serve as a template as we manufacture the final part. Due to the size of this particular part we will need to use hand tools to craft this part. The template will help us form each plate consistently and provide hole locations for transfer punches.
Feb 11 2021:
Parts were prepared for powder coating tomorrow. We had worked toward preparing the raw stock and cutting it to length. Machining team cut all the mounting plates we will be using to a general size so we can send them out for paint. Each plate will need to be cut to add the features as a secondary operation. This will give the plates a unique aesthetic that we hope will impress the judges.
The bearing blocks and spacers were created on the 3D printers. Our CAD team worked on repairing their models for a better presentation for judges. The intake elevator needed to be broken down into more subassemblies so it would be a higher quality presentation for the judges, when they view the drawing packages our team has prepared. We have worked hard to correct students work about the standards so they will speak to judges with a deeper technical understanding.
This is our programming team's first time back in the lab for the last two weeks due to quarantine. We are excited to have them back. Upon their return they began to outline their autonomous codes. They have considered various sensors and input combinations to maximize the efficiency of the code. They have developed sub VI's that will simplify the inputs for directing the base in autonomous. They are testing various encoders that are readily available in the lab.
