Fixing Mineral Dropper Components

By Jose and Evan

Task: Fix any issues with the mineral dropper

At the STEM expo we saw a clear issue with the mineral dropper: it is very poorly geared and doesn't deposit minerals well. A quick look at the gear configuration revealed that the gears were attached in a poor manner such that there was a lot of gear skippage. To remedy this, we attached a gear-box to the dropper to keep the gears interlocked.

The way the mineral dropper works is by having a wire attached to the shaft that turns the release be pushed when the robot hits the lander. The wire is attached with a portion of a gear custom cut for the job.

We need to upgrade to a thicker wire for more reliable shaft rotations. After doing so we needed a different wire holder and we chose a REV wheel. After cutting it and drilling bigger holes to accommodate the new wire we needed to attach it all to the shaft for the mineral release.

Next Steps

We need to finish bending the wire and test its ability to open the mineral release when contacting the lander.