California

Okay guys.

You all know we are going out to California for the national competition. We need to finalize tickets and logistics VERY VERY SOON. The cost per person is going to be quite a bit lower than we initially estimated because Alan Dreher's family is donating four round-trip tickets to the club, on top of purchasing Alan's. I NEED TO KNOW WHO IS GOING!

SMT has agreed to make Copperhead's wheels for us. I need to get the Solidworks files to them this weekend, and Monday, purchase the aluminum to make them out of and ship it up to them.

The last week or so has been very productive. You should know by now that each weapon motor has its own little assembly of a baseplate, a bearing support plate, two hex standoffs and a plastic mount piece to hold the motor. Then the shaft has an aluminum adapter with a shaft collar, wheel, and bearing. The shaft adapters are all almost done - I just need to machine a keyway onto them. The baseplates and bearing plates are all done.
The motor mounts actually needed to have the rear corners chamfered (if you don't know what that means, LOOK IT UP) so that they would fit into the 12" circle that is the inner diameter of the pot. The whole thing is coming together nicely.

However, there is still a LOT that needs to get done.

We need to make the drive wheels, and figure out some way to attach tires to them.
We need to finish drilling holes in the two drive motor mounts that I started.
We need to finish drawing EVERYTHING in CAD so that I can just put coordinates on every hole, and we can just dial them in on the milling machine.
We need to figure out how to arrange and secure the batteries.
We need to get the center shaft welded and attached.
We need to buy 12 more bearings for the weapon motor assemblies, terminal blocks for the batteries...
We need to cut the shell, make a ring to stiffen it, design and fabricate the teeth for it, and then test the whole thing and learn how to drive it.
THEN when all that's done, we need to weigh it and figure out where we can take the weight out because we are definitely going to need to lighten this thing.

Thanks to everyone and their parents who have donated this week.

Dan