Revised ball holder

[Tanner]

Just realized this as Dad posted that. A custom made kicker would be built off of "eye-balled" or "derived" dimensions of the robot. It severely limits how accurate the kicker could be made.

'Course you have to remember that the more we change the more we have to work on Thursday (ergo, less time for autonomous testing).

-Tanner

[Sunny]

Back to the pincher. Tanner mention the use of a encoder to tell when the roller stops and there to turn the motor off. Also mentioned having to add a back plate to prevent 3" overpinching. That would work, but what if we went back to my idea of some narrow hinged plate across the front just behind the roller at the right position, so the ball would hit it and with a properly adjusted switch, shut the roller off. We should not need the backplate then and not worry about over pinching.

I heard we will need a curved kicker.................If this is the case, someone needs to be autocadding one.......I could take a detailed drawing by Swift Atlanta and see what the possibilities are.....I was there this morning getting the motor cutoff an orginal Makita vac assy. The design would have to be pretty perfect.

Good news on the vac...with the recent success of the rollers...I'm not sure if we're going to be needing it...but it's always helpful to have a backup.


Both ways of backing would work. The hinging bar seems like something that would be slightly easier to implement, it would just take some planning and careful placing of this "hinge". This would also alter the shape of the kicker, and even whether we have to curve it at all, so we need to figure this out and figure out which one is better/easier. (To me, even if the hinge is a bit harder to implement, it seems to me like it would come with the benefit of not altering the kicker at all. Which is something that I would really like to avoid).

We got the roller system working today. The window motor did an excellent job of pulling the ball in, and keeping it there. The only issue we faced was that the unobtanium would slip on the shaft, and the ball would slip out. We used zip ties as a temporary solution(and it worked really well), but something more permanent, like rivets, are definitely in order.

We went to go CAD the new dimensions, but then we realized that the CAD was so different from the original design. We also realized that the Logan's Rover's Roller Placement is much different from Tanner's bot's roller placement. We should probably try to imitate the roller placement as much as possible, as that will definitely help with creating modules to put onto Tanner's bot.

We determined that the pinch bar will definitely have to be mounted low. And we mean *LOW*. So low in fact, that it seems to be hitting the bump when we try to go over it. We can definitely attempt to place the bar in a higher, more conservative position, but there are two issues with that:

- The roller might clearly lift the ball clear off the ground without a "mid" position.
- The lower bar's higher position might cause us to have to bend the kicker.

One solution would be to slide all of the wheels forward so that the front wheel plate is flush with the front of the robot. Which would also make the wheel flush with the front. That way, the lower bar can sit *really* low, and the bot can still legally traverse the bump.

From a competition standpoint, I think it'd be best to create modules that we can attach with a few screws and tweak at Palmetto. I know that we wanted to give Tanner time to program at Peachtree, but I think for autonomous, he'll need that time more than ever.

[Tanner]

Good news on the vac...with the recent success of the rollers...I'm not sure if we're going to be needing it...but it's always helpful to have a backup.

I think it'd be worth trying the double vacuum system first. I find it a bit more uh, dependable than building a system that is highly dependent on position of a few things on a robot's dimensions of which we don't accurately have. I'm not saying it's not worth it, but I consider it a bit more backup.

We went to go CAD the new dimensions, but then we realized that the CAD was so different from the original design. We also realized that the Logan's Rover's Roller Placement is much different from Tanner's bot's roller placement. We should probably try to imitate the roller placement as much as possible, as that will definitely help with creating modules to put onto Tanner's bot.

It's not incredibly off, just off. I can try deriving the distance of the wheels from the pictures I took, just to see if it is off.

One solution would be to slide all of the wheels forward so that the front wheel plate is flush with the front of the robot. Which would also make the wheel flush with the front. That way, the lower bar can sit *really* low, and the bot can still legally traverse the bump.

Might this cause the back of the robot to touch the ground as we angle up at the maximum degree?

From a competition standpoint, I think it'd be best to create modules that we can attach with a few screws and tweak at Palmetto. I know that we wanted to give Tanner time to program at Peachtree, but I think for autonomous, he'll need that time more than ever.

Ideally this would be great, but I'm not sure how modular we can make it if we know very little about what we're building it for.

-Tanner

[Tanner]

Upon further analysis of my image scaling software, it appears to be quite inaccurate. Measurements on one bar which I have set to 6 inches in Inventor, I have gotten values of 6.5, 7, and 5.8 from analyzing the images. Sure, I could take the average, but that's a pain for 8 different measurements.

-Tanner

[freds]

I looked at some pictures of the current kicker. I am not sure at all that it would clear the lower bar, even if was mounted at the very front. I wander if the bots that are using 'pinching' are using a more horizontal kicker vs a swinging kicker as we have.

I do not think a small hinged plate at the top would bother the kicker at all, at least not in the 'kicked' position.

If we move the front wheels forward, we have to move the rear the same amount otherwise we will bottom out on the bump.

IDK, just work, work, work,

[Sunny]

The reason why I'm pulling for the roller system more is because it's less dependent on creating that one tight seal. And as we saw, doing it in defense is near impossible, even with a good suck. As we saw today, you run into the ball, and you have it. That simple. And with a wide kicker, you can grab it kick it on any part of the roller.

We'll need to play around with it.

I think that by the time the kicker reaches the front of the robot, it has begun to arch up, and is well clearing that lower bar. We'll need to look at more pictures to be sure.

[Tanner]

I think that by the time the kicker reaches the front of the robot, it has begun to arch up, and is well clearing that lower bar. We'll need to look at more pictures to be sure.

Problem is that we don't have more pictures. I've got video of the old kicker, but I don't know how much has changed with the new kicker.

-Tanner

[Sunny]

I think that by the time the kicker reaches the front of the robot, it has begun to arch up, and is well clearing that lower bar. We'll need to look at more pictures to be sure.

Problem is that we don't have more pictures. I've got video of the old kicker, but I don't know how much has changed with the new kicker.

-Tanner

For the rollers, we'll need to convert the roller back into the wide position. So pictures of the old kicker will be best.

[Logan]

IMO we should make our rollers work first and then have the vacuum assy as back up.

I think that two vacuums will have plenty enough force to keep the ball in place, but lining up with the ball was a total hassle.

Agree with curving the kicker. I suppose we could CADD it... (by we, I mean Tanner).

We may want to consider adding more mass to the kicker as well. I don't think that it would significantly increase the load on the motor... and we'd probably put the CIM in the shifter anyway if we were going with double vacuums, right?

Also, the kicker's unspooling relies on encoder values and not timing, right? If it relies on encoder values then we can use the CIM and not have to worry about anything...

[Tanner]

IMO we should have make our rollers work first and then have the vacuum assy as back up.

Got to figure out the rollers though. Right now we just know it works on yours. How to put it on the actual competition bot is still unclear.

Agree with curving the kicker. I suppose we could CADD it... (by we, I mean Tanner).

We could, but I don't have enough information to make a accurate robot to model it for.

Also, the kicker's unspooling relies on encoder values and not timing, right? If it relies on encoder values then we can use the CIM and not have to worry about anything...

Yes. In theory, nothing should change functionality wise, but you never know. That darn rope is tricky tricky.

-Tanner