Catapult Puncher

The above is a picture of our powerful catapult puncher. Powered by two motors, a slip gear and a rail that is also missing a few rubber bands to power it up. 

There are also two standoffs which are the two cylinder pieces on top, on each side of the rail. These standoffs moved either up one level or down one level can determine the power of the puncher. The rubber bands would be connected to these standoffs and wrap around the rectangle plate at the bottom of the catapult. 

https://youtu.be/GJRABXCFKgs

This is a link to a video of a linear catapult puncher that is being tested but designed a little bit differently. Enjoy! 

Joseph Palezyan 

PDR of our bot for VEX WORLDS

A PDR is a Preliminary Design Review (PDR). The Preliminary Design Review (PDR) is a technical assessment that establishes the Allocated Baseline of a system to ensure a system is operationally effective.

Usually, during a PDR, we ask the question why, not how. Questions like why we could use a catapult instead of a flywheel to shoot balls during a VEX robotics competition are asked instead of how the fly wheel works. We don’t want to waste time during a PDR, by asking how. After meeting with my team CSUN Matabots, we decided to calculate the points we could score while hitting flags, turning caps, and parking on the platform, then designed our bots based on the type of strategy we agreed upon. After agreeing on a strategy we started to CAD a bot based on this strategy. Before any manufacturing is done, we had to design the entire robot on #solidworks and present this design to the rest of the team, to then start the production. This saves us time, money, and most importantly, helps us design something to the fullest capability rather then building by hand.