Entry 18 · October 26, 2026 · Engineering Notebook

Meeting Summary

Following our plan from the scrimmage, we tore the robot down to start the rebuild, with the goal of 3D printing most of the new parts. We debriefed the scrimmage and charted our course of action. Josh worked on the CAD design for a new lower shooter, Torin took the robot apart and built a new inside frame, and Sarah designed new intake fingers that we'll print in TPU.

Teardown & New Frame

Torin led the disassembly of the robot
Torin also started building a new inside frame to support the walls and the intake
Because the new shooter sits much lower, the walls will be a lot shorter than our old full-height walls, so the robot will be much shorter overall

Angled view of the drive base with its motors and wiring during the rebuild — The bare robot base

Top view of the stripped-down robot: the mecanum drive base, motors, wiring in protective tubing, and the ramp — The beginnings of our new structure

New Shooter Design

The catapult arm that pushed balls up to the shooter kept jamming, so we're moving the shooter down so the balls go directly into it
The shooter will point flat, straight backward, with a ramp that curves the balls upward
The shooter will be a tube that fits both sizes of balls. A V-shaped groove at the bottom of the tube will hold the balls in a fixed position.
Josh is designing the shooter ramp and the intake ramp in CAD as two pieces that fit together
Future idea: make the top of the tube rotate. In one position it would line up with a fixed, curved U-shaped tube that could reach over the flowers and shoot into them. We'll save this for later, once everything else is working well.

Intake Fingers: TPU

At the scrimmage, another robot ripped the rubber bands off our intake, so we decided to switch to silicone-style fingers
Sarah researched silicone fingers and found that buying them would be pretty expensive. She also looked into 3D printing our own molds.
Then we learned we can print flexible fingers directly in TPU, so we're going with that, and we ordered TPU
Sarah designed the fingers with the assistance of Claude: a PLA hub slides onto the hex shaft, and the TPU fingers attach to the hub

Blue 3D-printed PLA hub on a hex shaft, with slots around it for the TPU fingers — The PLA hub on the hex shaft, where the TPU fingers will attach

Ideas for Later

LED lights on top of the robot to show which colors of balls we have and how many
Color sensor: sense which balls we intake, so the robot only keeps our alliance's nectar and pollen and the intake rejects the other alliance's balls. Knowing what order the balls are in would also let us shoot just the one nectar we need to tip the hive and save the rest for the other side, so we don't waste balls. We'll focus on shooting first and add the sensor later.
Red/blue switch: a physical switch to set our alliance color, so we don't have to change the code

Giving ACNOZAD Some Personality

We want big, goofy stick-on googly eyes for the robot, about 5 inches, the kind that shake.
We might add a chicken beak and wattle. The intake could be the mouth, with a little beak above it.

Homework / Action Items

Josh: keep designing the shooter ramp and intake ramp (two pieces that fit together), using Claude for help with any parts he's unsure how to design, and send the files to Sarah to print (hopefully by the end of tomorrow); print the hubs; go to Video Games Plus
Sarah: print Josh's ramp design as soon as it's ready; print the TPU fingers once the TPU arrives (probably after our next meeting); write up the entries for the meeting before the scrimmage, the scrimmage, and this meeting, and upload them to the website
Torin: make a pre-match checklist, possibly with the help of AI, and add a few things to the packing for game day checklist
Coach: get big, goofy googly eyes for the robot (about 5 inches)