How does one go about designing and building what is in effect a high speed, precise robotic forklift for moving boxes around?
Scenes from Week One of FIRST Build Season.
Inventory parts.
Building a robot has so many little tasks associated with it. The week to date has been mostly focused on hashing out a design, and by end of session Monday the Great Bear Claw versus Belts debate was finally settled. But there are also the straightforward, slightly boring things that have to be done.
With new gearboxes you are supposed to assemble them, then run them for a half hour without load and also without lubrication. It smooths off any minor irregularities in the gear teeth. It is really noisy. Somebody really should sit there and watch, just to make sure that nothing over heats and that the power connection does not vibrate loose.
Here we have one of our rookie members patiently watching the screaming gearboxes. He has his headphones on and is listening to music. I'd like to think the band he has on is also called The Screaming Gearboxes and sounds about the same!
I wish you had stated which one won.
ReplyDeleteOldster
ReplyDeleteThe team has constructed a simple prototype that actually uses foam wheels instead of belts. Charmingly the wheels were left over from my middle school combat robotics class, of which many of the high school team are alumni.
Much work yet to have a viable mechanism, and it is possible that the Claw might return...
TW