Materials Test Planning

By Bhanaviya

Task: Create a system to test our materials to better understand their grip potential

Here at Iron Reign, we're used to using off-the-shelf materials for our robot. For this season, these include pillowcases (front and back) and an Einstein wig, since we are looking for materials with lesser grip. However, we need to do a thorough investigation of these materials before we can determine their efficacy on the robot.

Specifically, we plan to implement these parts on a ramp connecting the intake and our launcher. Although we have not yet mounted our intake onto the robot, we expect to have a launch leading down from the intake to the launcher to enable to ring to slide down and then be launched. This requires a material with very less grip and a lot more slip. However, before we can decide which material would have the best grip, we need to test them to determine their on-robot properties. To do this, we will implement a slip test as shown below.

The main thing that we want to test is the amount of energy they have while sliding and then the amount of energy they lose upon collision. We plan to test this through the coefficient of friction of the mitts. Simply put, we will place the ring on top of the of the pillowcases/wig and will tape down the material being tested on a flat surface. Then, we will lift the surface and using simple inverse trigonometric properties, we will calculate theta, the angle at which the stone begins to slip from the material. The bigger the angle, the higher the friction coefficient of the material, which equates to it having better grip. Since we are looking for a material with the least grip possible, we will be looking for the material with enables the ring to slide down at the smallest angle.

Next Steps

With our testing planned out, we will next begin documenting the angle at which the ring slips from each type of material. The calculations from the actual testing, including the equation we used, will be inputted into a separate post.