Bud, Jimmy, Kersten, Chrissy, Beth, Heidi and I got cranking this Sunday afternoon. Jimmy, especially, came in our hour of need and helped us think out of the box - literally. I had a lot of reservations about fixing the hopper to the chassis and have the turret rotate, given that we'd have a ramp cantilevered off the turret, and then Jimmy took a look at it and asked, can't we fix the hopper to the top of the turret as well? So given that we can expand to 60" by 60" once we start, having a 28" X 38" hopper that rotates is NO PROBLEM now.
As well, Jimmy WELDED a beautiful and light 3 lb. hopper frame for us. Now its all Chrissy's and Kersten's to add mesh and polycarb sheeting to.
We also did a bunch of brainstorming on the indexing / gating device. Instead of having the ramp come in from the side, the hopper allows the balls to come in from the top now, and we can float the gating device rather than have to cut slots in the ramp. More coming tomorrow. We're getting there.
One thing that was really useful for me today was to kind of mock everything up in terms of the launching sequence. With a bunch of things clamped to the launcher, and everyone helping ou and holding something, whether it was the gating device, or the ramp, we tried loading two balls down the hopper, and hooking up the gating device temporarily so it would turn and load balls one at a time. Man, that really helped solidify things for me.
Kudos to Chrissy and Kersten for the good work today prototyping the hopper with the mesh stuff. Lots of good prototyping and learning going on today that made it really fun!!!
TOMORROW. 5:30 pm. IDEO. BRING CHASSIS AS WELL.
Bud and I are both worried that with all the stuff on top of it, the launcher is going to bounce itself off the chassis and run away!!! See you later!!
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