Improving the Catcher Design

By Dylan, Darshan, Omar, Jayesh, Evan, Alisa

Task: Add Improvements to the Catcher Design

Today our team worked on improving the methods of capturing and holding blocks and balls. Our first design involving zip ties had major difficulties including that it had little strength to pull objects in. For this reason, we redesigned the beater bar using a 3-D printer that had stronger materials to capture materials along with frictionless tape which did not cause the blocks to become stuck. Through our tests we can see that the blocks can go up the ramp from the beater bars we created and can easily be stored in our designed holder trough.

Reflections

Our catcher as a whole is only about half way finished. Our beater bars work well yet our holder trough has not been fully added to the robot meaning the blocks being launched up the ramp have yet to be slowed and contained. Once they are, and we add these to the motors our catcher prototype will be mostly complete and only the finer details of making sure the beater bar does not disrupt the ramp or nearby screws on the robot will be needed.