Everything in a Nutshell

Well, time is going by fast as we work Week 5. We've got many things going on:


Mechanical

Inside of tube grabber/claw: using three PVC tubes, a single pneumatic moves two of the PVC tubes to open and close in order to grab logo pieces from the inside. The grabber is mounted to a four foot long arm that slides up and down on the elevator.

Elevator: Twin slider design with two chains for lift, going to be tested for jamming soon.
Minibots: Currently, our fastest design uses motors with the transmissions removed for direct drive of an axle with surgical tubing for traction on the pole. Time = 1.7 seconds

Electrical

We're wiring up our final electrical board, which will fit on an 15x18 inch area; it has two flaps that go up and bend inwards to make the appearance of a box. I'll post pictures when it's finished.

Programming

As far as programming goes, our programmer is working on a program that will change the PID during drive time, either adding or subtracting from the values depending on button presses, to allow us to test out PID on the fly. We got the CAN bus working and the Jags are working in sync, although we only have 4 black Jags and are using 3 brown Jags at the moment.

Chairman's

With Chairman's we've made incredible progress. Today was a team read day, and we've been hovering just over or just under our 10,000 character max for the last few days. With less than a week to complete the paper, we're right on schedule. We will be working on the presentation part after the essay is submitted.

T-shirts

Our team is getting ready to order clothing for the year, so team members, make sure you turn your order forms in soon! For non team-members, we have two varieties of fan t-shirts this year. Please pick up an order form from the lab if you're interested. We are using sales of t-shirts as a fundraiser as well. Each shirt is $20.


Well, there's everything in a nutshell! Thanks for reading!