Team Wrap Up by Andrew Kelner

Well we've finished the competition and I thought I would give a brief wrap up. Although our machine lost in the first round to team Thunder and Lightning I thought our design was solid and that with some luck we could have done much better in the competition. Our machine was made from a housing made of wood which we lasercut and put teeth in and then epoxied together. The arm of the machine was placed in the center groove of the housing and was controlled by a rack and pinion device run by one of the planetary gearboxes and constrained by several wheels. The lower arm held attached the upper arm to the wedge and had the plate through which the Kevlar thread was placed (originally where the fisheye hooks were). The wedge was moved up and down by Kevlar thread attached to a spool and powered by another planetary gearbox. The machine itself was powered by a double gearbox that was mounted in the center of the machine and drove the two front wheels. The double gearbox axles were connected to the front wheel axles by .25in diameter tubing and zip ties. Faulty zip ties may be why the machine didn't drive straight (see my final thoughts write up for more details). All in all I thought the machine was very solid and did a great job of competing in the arena. With a little more time to iron out the kinks I think it would've even had a chance at winning. See my final write up (below) for a more in depth look at our final machine and pictures.
-Andrew Kelner