Our time management has caught up to us, and our original ambitious climb design has proven to be very complex, and the available student resources has not been sufficient enough to support the effort any further. By the conclusion of our meeting we decided to simplify the design to a proven concept that could be implemented within our current parameters. The intent is to work toward a design that will work for our first competition March 16. Then work toward modifying the design as needed for our 2nd competition April 6th. The intent to "improve as we go" will relieve our resources from the complexity of the climb design. We can then pivot our resources to manufacturing once this has been completed.

This decision had come with a significant time commitment so our team needed to work late, but it will hopefully pay off soon.

The prototype team added a climb structure to the back of the wood mock up machine. The base of the elevator has been placed in its location.

Our raw material had returned from powder coating and our swerve drive had begun the assembly process. They needed to rework a few parts due to the tight tolerances and the addition of the new paint layer. The holes were originally plugged to prevent the paint layer, but our sponsor had removed them before applying the layer of paint.

The intake team updated their CAD model to include more detail such as belts, pulleys, bearing blocks, and motors

The prototype climb simulated the necessary cabling to mimic our final designs functions. The pulleys were dropped in place and modified as needed to get a powered down elevator to creating a lifting mechanism. We then continued to work through the motor calculations to create a gearbox assembly fit for the application. We used JVN's gearbox calculator and simulated our working conditions.

Our swerve drive assemblies have been assembled to our test base. Now its ready for code testing.

We are working through troubleshooting our Base Assembly model. The model has accumulated errors with some of the relations. The overhaul on evaluating the model cost us about 4-5 hours of effort time. Something that could have been avoided if our preseason training could have covered the scenario.

We did a short work session due to the incoming snow storm. We continued to refine prototypes. The intake system was considered making the intake taller to allow for a vertical channel for two balls. To increase the efficiency of our testing we utilized t-slot extrusion so we could slide axles to approximate locations and refine quickly, rather than drilling new holes for each iteration. The other sub assemblies continued to refine their CAD models.

Climb removed a spring loaded latch subassembly and considered implementing a ratcheting system to ensure the motor didn't need to be active for the majority of the match. We will need to get parts on order for our new design features.