As you probably guessed, progress on the TerrorBytes robotics team continued this week. We’re getting much closer to completing our robot, and we continue to prepare for our first competition of the 2017 season, in Winterville NC, from March 3rd-5th.
Design has finalized the shooter assembly, and met with our machining sponsor, Solara, early in the week. We received our parts just a few days later, in record time! Thanks, Solara!
The machined parts with a coat of green drying on.
Fabrication has continued work on the chassis, even though our the gearbox we plan to use still has not arrived. We hatched a crackpot plan to fix our wheel sizing issues, which involved machining down the wheel shape using a mentor’s homemade CNC machine.
Preparing a surface for the crackpot CNC plan.
Subsystem fabrication for the competition robot began, which went smoothly. We are now waiting for many parts to either ship or come back into stock.
Our prototyping activities are wrapping up, with our prototyping groups conducting final testing of their creations. We are also building a prototype robot, which will be a restoration of our 2014 robot chassis to host our prototypes. We successfully installed gearboxes and wheels on the chassis, and next up will be control system installation and prototype mounting.
The restored 2014 chassis, with old control system elements.
Programming team conducted their first tests on the test board last week, checking out the robot drivetrain, and most subsystems. They have completed nearly all the code, and submitted it for an initial review.
Controls this week mapped out the robot control system layout, working within some tight design constraints. As soon as the robot base plate is prepared, Controls(as well as Fabrication) is ready to begin integration.
We’ve made significant progress on building our new pit. The PVC sections have been glued together, and are currently being painted team colors. We’ve ordered new pit banners, and have begun work on general pit decorations.
Marketing has finalized the T-shirt design, and is ready to send out the T-shirt orders. We’ve got a special TerrorBytes logo for this year which will be featured on the shirt, and we think it looks pretty cool.
This was a great week on the team, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the support we get from our sponsors, who are kind enough to fund our crazy ideas and adventures. So, until next week, use your best judgment!
