Slide Lock

By Max

Task: Model a part to keep the slide from going too far forward

Since we mounted the beater bars on a slide, we have been keeping them from going too far and falling off their rails either by obstructing them with a couple of bolts or with a bent piece of steel wire, but neither method is fool proof. The wire can get bent out of shape as the slide moves forward and collides with it, and the bolts can fall out or damage the metal of the slide itself as they collide. To solve this, we decided to make a 3D printed part to serve as a lock. This went through several iterations in design (all can be seen below) before we were satisfied, and we printed out two copies of the final version in nylon so that they would be strong, but still a bit flexible so that we could pry them up and remove the whole slide mechanism for maintenance if need be.

Reflections

The parts serve their purpose well. The only issue with the version we are using is that the thickness of the beam connecting the hook and the attachment point is so thick that prying up the pieces is more difficult than originally intended, but it is still possible and further revisions to the part will likely be too time-consuming for their benefits to oughtweigh those of putting the same time into programming the robot's autonomous routines.