Week 2

Authored by Ishan Deshpande

Summary: Testing of the shooter mechanism in our main atrium as well as more construction of the TARGET apparatus

Description: Most of the time was spent on testing if our shooter prototype could shoot the ball accurately into the TARGET from a 30 ft distance (approximately the same distance as from the back of the TRENCH). We wanted to shoot from the back of the trench because it will significantly reduce our cycle time from shooting to the pickup area. The only problem is that this is hard to do accurately every time.

Because we have only one flywheel, the shooter will add a bit of spin to the ball, meaning that the ball’s trajectory may be slightly different every time. An improvement may be to have two flywheels that shoot out the ball, reducing the spin.

When the shooter is operational, it also consumes a lot of battery power (dropping our power from 12 V to 6 V when running the motor at 100%). A solution to this while keeping the same amount of power on the wheels is yet to be found.

It may be more useful in the future to focus on CADding our climbing mechanism instead of our shooting prototype, even though shooting is more exciting. Climbing will guarantee us more RP every time, especially if the buddy climb is functional.