Final Documentation

Yesterday was the final Slotbots II competition. Unfortunately, we lost in the first round (due to a controversial ruling!). Regardless, we had a lot of fun and were very pleased with our final machine depicted above.

The machine consists of three modules: the waterjet aluminum base plate, the front wedge arm, and the back scoring arm. The front and back arms were manufactured in a very similar process. The outer arms of these two modules were taken from the kit and milled to specific dimensions. The inner arms are made out of delrin bought from McMaster. The mounting of the planetary gearbox on the back of the outer arms (see pictures) was exactly the same for the front and back arms. The only differences in the two arms are the wedges located at the bottom of each. The front arm has a large waterjet aluminum wedge for securing the flipper, while the back arm has a wedge shape milled into the inner delrin arm for pushing ping pong balls. We used the 6-speed gearbox to rotate the back arm.

A few disappointments with our machine were how slowly our front arm took to make it to the flipper, and the lack of precision we had in rotating the back arm. However, overall we were pleased with the simplicity and clean look of our machine, and functionally it accomplished everything that we had desired.