MCM Complete!

This week was mad scramble to finish our MCM. With forty plus man hours spent in the shop this week we finished our arm module enough to get it working for Wednesday. After seeing the arm in action we decided we needed to tweak the gearing a little bit, as the rubber band conveyor belt was producing a greater radial load then we were expecting, which produced greater friction in the system.

As of Wednesday afternoon we had completed most of the modifications for our arm module, as well as the engineering for the rest of our machine. We decided to drop our screw design and go with a two wheel drive cart instead. We came to this decision after realizing that we would be able to get almost as much torque if we designed the cart better. We also realized that since the top of the arena was now covered in carpet, it would be easier to get traction. This new design will also be easier to make, which will allow us to finish our machine earlier, thus have more practice time.

We hope to have our entire machine finished by Friday, December 4^th, at the latest. We want to finish our machine early so that we can spend the final week improving our machine, and working out any bugs. As of right now we are on schedule, and ready for, what we hope, is our final build week.