October 3rd Update

In a last ditch effort to try to get “Gill Out”, our Chill Out clone’s elevator working, we added a spring to help keep tension on the “up” rope and used the tensioner on the “down” rope side to keep things tensioned. The “up” rope has a significant fleet angle that causes the total run of line to be significantly longer than the “down” rope which is mostly straight up and down.

This didn’t immediately work so we have made the decision to switch to a cascade setup for the elevator which means designing a new gearbox and redesigning all of the line runs. We’re hoping to have the CAD for this mostly done overnight so that we can begin manufacturing pieces tomorrow morning.

Fixes and maintenance on last year’s robot “Gillbert” continue with a new funnel being fabricated and attached as well as deep maintenance on critical systems. We’re hoping this only has to run one more competition as it’s falling apart as old robots do. If we don’t get the new robot working well, Gillbert will have to hang on for Beach Blitz as it’s final competition. In the meantime, it continues to be abused for drive team tryouts.

Workshop cleaning and upgrades are going well; we’ve moved all of the 3d printers over to a shelf and now have room for a new metal bender and 1-ton arbor press. More upgrades to occur after the offseason competitions end. Still no updates on our new half-field on campus, looking like this might not happen this year.