Printing Rings

By Trey

Task: Print some game elements to get a kick start on the season

Recently, this year’s competition details were released, and while we couldn’t quite get started on a robot immediately like we did last year we were able to do some prototyping for ring launchers. The thing that we made which enabled us to do this was a rendering of the game element for the year. This was done by taking the model released on AndyMark’s website and 3D printing it. With this, we were able to start thinking about the size and proportion of our future launcher as well as its construction. The ring was printed in PLA at its exact size to best accomplish this.

The biggest problem with this method of construction is that the ring does not have the characteristic foam squishiness so we also made another ring out of foam tape to get a better idea of how the official game element might fly and how we can get it to fly. We were able to throw the two rings around and notice that there is a very noticeable spin that can be achieved and will likely be desirable in the future for maximum stability in the air. The realistic shape of the ring was helpful when we were trying to figure out how the ring would fly since different ring shapes would obviously fly differently so having a replica was nice.

Next Steps:

We are going to kick off our development of a robot soon and with the rings we made we should be able to develop better early on than if we were empty-handed. This development is of course being curbed by the pandemic since at the moment only a few builders can come in to build at a time. Being one of these builders, I think the goal for the first launcher prototype is to see how easy it is to get a ring to fly and what variables will be important in the future for trajectory and speed rather than actual functionality. We are excited to have a whole season of development ahead of us.