First Post

Welcome to the Team Hole in One blog.

Our team has settled on a final design, but went through a number of different ideas before choosing one.

Strategy;
The overall strategy of the game is to get ping pong balls to the other side of an arena. There are several number of ways of doing this, ranging from shooting the balls through the air to vacuuming the balls into a cart to simply pushing the balls to the other side. After a comparison of all of the unique, creative ways to move ping pong balls, our team decided that the most simple design would be the best to use. We settled on having an arm that simply sweeps the balls to the other side. The arm can also lift the last few heavier balls over the center of the arena using a rack and pinion system to raise and lower the arm.
Here's a picture of a preliminary solid model of our machine.

This picture is even color coded to easily identify key pieces. The arm is colored green, as is the mini scoop on the end of it to help lift the last few balls over the center. The pillow blocks for the axles are colored blue. The rack and pinion are colored maize. The double gear box and the planetary gear box are both red. The wheels are black.

Here you see an angle showing the support for the arm. You can see slots in the clear acrylic plate that serve to guide the arm. The arm may only slide vertically. This is an earlier solid model as you can see the motors, wheels and such are absent.
One more thing of note is that for the entirety of the modeling and design choices thus far, we have been keeping the materials list in the forefront of our minds. We've tried to have every part on the solid model be a part from our kit of materials. This will help us in the near future as we double check we have enough materials to build our machine, as we have already been planning this. Also we have been putting the assembly of our machine onto the assembly of the arena to double check clearances and dimensions of our machine.

This blog will be receiving updates as our machine is being constructed.