Week 4
Jan 27 2024:
Bumpers
Today we started construction on our bumpers for Alphabot! These bumpers complement all our work completing our base. The students that made them had to stay within a tolerance and they needed to follow designs so they got good experience with that.
CAD
The alphabot had a ton of progress. They were able to complete a few sections of the robot and made progress on every subassembly.
Jan 30 2024:
Machining
Using the CNC router we practiced making parts for the robot. From right to left we started getting the speeds and feeds right, trying to make sure our setups are accurate. we started with some simple L brackets. We worked on getting the profile of the L bracket correct. Then we added the hole pattern. We recognized the hole depth needed to be deeper then we updated our CAM software known as V Carve to update our parameters and get the part made accurately.
One thing we noticed was the holes weren't aligned well. They appeared to be on an angle from our set up. As a countermeasure we added a two by two inch grid to make sure each part is lined up properly prior to cutting surface. This will allow our machine operator to have a visual reference if a piece of material is misaligned before cutting the part.
Launcher
Today we prototyped the current launcher and acquisition on the same module. We tested each part independently however we encountered some troubles when we combined them. The belt carrying the note would slip off and no longer apply enough pressure to continue carrying the note into the launcher mechanism. We remedied this by using rollers instead. The rollers provided more consistent pressure on the game piece and didn't allow it to slip like the belt did.
Jan 31 2024:
Machining
Light weighting from the CNC router. We used the knowledge from yesterday to lightweight a piece of aluminum extrusion. Luke milled a "hold down clamp" to keep the piece down and keeps it from moving. When something is being cut on the CNC router it the cutting tool tries to pull it up so locking down your parts is important!
Feb 1 2024:
Electrical
Using our Bambu Labs 3D printer we created wire management systems. The electrical team designed a cable management mount that connected to the REV MAX pattern. The print was made from black carbon filament to hold Red & Black 12 AWG Anderson connectors.
Machining
We tested engraving depths. finding what depths were most clear. We tested from 0.025in to .001in engraving depth. We noticed the tool improved greatly when the depth of cut was closest to 0.001in depth. We will look to include this with our previously developed Isogrid pattern to make a hybrid lightweighting pattern to use throughout the machine. We will also look to develop a version for FRC team 325 and our shared brand of BTR.