Build Day 5

Today at the Nasa lab we had roughly 12 students experimenting with various prototypes for kicking/launching mechanisms. One group seemed to find particular success with a pneumatic-kicker, which was able to launch the ball just over the hump attaining a distance of about 15 ft.

The girl scouts also came up with an interesting concept of a surgical-tubing powered scoop. This design may be promising, but has not been sufficiently tested yet.

Meanwhile the design team worked diligently upstairs properly tolerancing the gearbox and shafts as well as designing the 4″ wheels (see previous post).

In the machine shop the CNC began rolling out the bearing blocks, doing the second pass.  By the end of tomorrow the bearing blocks should be ready for anodizing (provided there are no unseen complications).

Tomorrow the material for the wheels needs to be cut out so they are ready for machining. Pushing or launching the ball past the ramp has proved difficult, requiring excessive propulsion or front-spin and we will continue prototyping different designs.