Week 6

Feb 13 2021:

We continued to work toward finalizing our game design manual. The game manual has been progressing, and we've attempted to incorporate our game theme throughout the manual. This has been an impressive effort lead by a group of new team members both juniors and freshman.

Our CAD team worked to breakdown the Intake Elevator assembly into more subassemblies to simplify the models exploded view drawing.

We also conducted tests of how to tint our polycarbonate for our intake assembly. We tested a spray and a vinyl wrap. At the conclusion of our test we were more pleased with the results of the vinyl wrap style.

The manufacturing team prepared CNC programs for parts after they return from powder coating. They used MasterCAM to write the programs and simulate their tool paths.

Feb 15 2021:

Feb 16 2021:

We were unable to host a work session due to the weather. Our area was predicted to get 10+ inches of snow. The team worked remotely on game design challenge, and administrative tasks.

Mr.Frank was able to stop by the lab, but the team didn't host a work session due to road conditions. Other team members worked remotely, to the best of their ability. We are expecting to receive our parts back from Powder Coating Specialty in the next day or so.

Feb 17 2021:

Big thanks to our sponsor Powder Coating Specialty for the PERFECT matte black finish we were looking for. We called them last Wednesday and they were able to get the parts turned around in about a week. These guys are awesome!!

Now time to start our robot's assembly!!

Feb 18 2021:

The game design team continued to add supplemental images to the game manual. They took snap shots of their CAD model from different perspectives to label field elements.

The manufacturing team reconsidered which material to use for the extended intake after a few items were incorrectly manufactured. The profiles of the plates were slightly incorrect, and the template was no longer able to locate from its zero point. We then needed to reevaluate what we could use in the lab to create new side plates. One of our team members located a material labeled as "HIPS". HIPS is an acronym that refers to High Impact Polystyrene. This was donated to our program from Curbell plastics. This was a valuable material because our Rabbit Laser USA's owner informed us this was a unique material that could be cut on a 60W laser that we have in our lab, and would be useful for our robotics applications. This was the perfect opportunity to apply contributions from both sponsors. We then used the laser to cut the new side plates and the results were very impressive.