Archives for November, 2008
We incorporated rack-and-worm drive systems into both the shifting assembly and the steering. We are still working on mounting the drive motor for the steering. We had a lot of trouble at first, but then we realized that we could use an intermediary gear between the worm and the rack. This makes it a lot [...]
As you can see, we are now on the new site. Please bear with us as we work on it. For the moment, you can see the Plog and the galleries here. Soon this section of the website will be integrated into the theme we are designing for the rest (you can see how it’s [...]
I am taking tomorrow off work, and Will and I will be working the entire day and part of Thursday morning. We are going to get a lot done. We also finally have the server information for the new location of the website, so by the end of our work, this Plog and the image [...]
Will’s gearbox system worked, but we decided to try a worm gear again. We’ve come up with a system that may work, but we have not finished it. We raised the worm gear up, and decreased the length of the rack, allowing us to place a gear on the worm shaft closer to the center [...]
Our main problem right now is the steering system. We are trying to find a way to make it slower and more powerful. We attempted to come up with a system that would drive the rack with a worm gear, but we had problems physically fitting a drive gear onto the worm gear’s axle without [...]
We have finished work for the day, and are currently cleaning up. We designed a new touch bumper based off of the one from the Mindstorms manual, extending the arms and remounting the touch sensors within the system, as well as redesigning the actual mount for the whole system. It functions almost perfectly. It will [...]
We are having a very hard time making the bumper system work. I spent about an hour and a half working on a system which we then completely discarded. This is a rather common occurrence; one of us has a brilliant idea which turns out to completely suck. This time it was my turn. I [...]
We are working on a new mounting system for the touch bumpers. One problem with the current one is that there is too much shear; the bumper twists when struck on the side. Ideally it will transfer the force of impact directly to the respective outboard touch sensor.
We’ll be working this weekend. After I get out of work on Saturday, we’re going to my school’s production of King Lear, and then Will is staying here. We will do some work Sunday morning before I have to work at 12.
We are done working. We are loading up my car with all of the stuff. We have not finished mounting the touch sensors. Although we came up with several ideas and built prototypes, none of them have worked properly. At the moment we are thinking of trying to mount the sensors vertically aligned with the [...]
We did some work on the shifting system, reinforcing the gearbox and bracing systems. This part is now complete, but we’ve run into problems in other areas. First of all, the touch bumpers have been far more complicated than we imagined. We have only now come up with a working model for them, and it [...]
We are finished working for the night, and are heading to sleep, as we have been getting decidedly silly and unproductive. We will pick up with the touch bumpers in the morning.
We just had a power outage. We’re now back online, and are going to do some work on the independent studies we are doing this year. We will spend some time on physics before deploying the calculus and getting to work on the Lego. We may also take advantage of Daylight Savings Time ending tomorrow [...]