Song of the day: The boys are back in town – Thin Lizzy
Welcome back to the official SART blog!! We just came back from our competition in Bordeaux (like 5 months ago), and it’s been a while since our last update. So, let’s catch up on everything so far, such as breaking our robot arm during the competition which was pretty awful, and also me – the newly appointed blog writer!
Let me begin by introducing myself, I am Yolanda and I have become the new writer for the SFX SART blog which is very exciting! I’ve never been part of robotics or ever considered it. However, I thought that despite all that, I should give something new a try and now I have this amazing opportunity to be part of something I never would have imagined, and I’m learning so many new things along the way!
Since the pretty successful competition in Bordeaux (we came third place!) – considering the very late nights (or I guess you could say early mornings) and the hectic itinerary for the actual travel part – we have begun to reflect on our experience and what we should improve on our robot, considering the multiple complications we faced during the competition. Especially the issues that impacted us the most, such as breaking the arm of our robot whilst it was climbing stairs during the competition.
We used T-slot rails which allow for quick prototyping which we used from old broken 3D printers. We changed the normal head gear motors we used during the last competition to worm gear motors. This is because the normal head gear motors we used before would move when the robot was on a slope, and it would roll down the hill. However, our new and improved worm gear motors will lock out, which stops the robot from turning and now, the robot will only move when the motor moves. This gives us more control and the ability to climb up the slopes without the robot moving.
Our PLA Flex Filament is what we use for 3D printing for our robot, and it gained too much moisture and became too brittle to use. So how did we solve this? Buy a new filament that’s brand new and works perfectly? Of course not. We found out that if we put the filament in the oven, it would suck out the moisture and our filament would basically work good as new. It did work okay, but it wasn’t perfectly un-moisturised so we’re still working on that too (oh, and don’t mind Rod, he’s obviously very photogenic).
But, that’s about all the progress we’ve made so far on our robot, and right now we’re just focusing on how we can improve from our greatest issues in Bordeaux and (hopefully) make our next robot the best one yet!
Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time with more updates!!
– Yolanda Gill; team member of SART SFX