What did I accomplish?
I assembled a linear actuator (1 axis of the gantry) and designed and CAD modelled pockets which have a slot to embed our breakbeams in them.
Am I on schedule or behind?
I feel on schedule with our latest Gantt chart. While I didn’t get to programming the linear actuator (gantry), I was pleased with the progress we made on the under-table routing and pocket design.
What do I hope to complete in the next week?
I hope to program the gantry to move in a straight line and mount a magnet to it. I also hope to print and test the pockets and finalize the design.
On the verification of my systems
I have contributed to a lot of the subsystems, and the one that I am owning, the pitch, is still awaiting its core component — the gantry. I just finished assembling the gantry and have yet to verify it.
Another core component of the pitch is the “coupling mechanism”, which includes everything in the scope of the ball and getting it to move with the gantry under the table. At first, our design included a magnet that we would linearly retract. Our first ball design was a steel puck with a plastic cover on it, as we feared the weight of a full ball would be too much for the flipper. Our main test was a drag test with the ball, where we had the ball above a piece of the surface material and dragged it with a magnet below. From our testing, we concluded that the puck experienced too much friction, and we changed to a ball once we realized that the flipper was strong enough to hit it effectively. We also tested a few different strengths of magnet and settled on one that held the ball strongly enough so that it stayed coupled while undergoing massive acceleration changes (by dragging the magnet in aggressive paths and speeds), yet not too strong so that it was difficult to decouple the ball with the flick of our fingers (replicating a flipper striking it). The balls rolled and thus didn’t suffer from friction like the pucks.
Much of my contributions have been physical thus far, namely the game board. This required little formal testing. We needed to ensure the game dimensions passed the eye test and that the board felt strong enough.