Here is our finished machine. We even gave it a red and black paintjob.
We have been practicing quite a lot and the machine seems to work perfectly fine.
We hope to get a good score in the seeding round and hopefully do well in the competition.

Competition week is finally here! This past week we had finished slightly ahead of schedule so we've been tweaking and tuning our machine. In preliminary test runs, we found that the front gate wasn't moving quite as we had anticipated so we decidedto mix around the gear ratios. We had some on-the-spot adjustments to our original design as well. One noticeable difference is the net structure. After originally planning to make the net out of nylon mesh and string, we found that the material

was too heavy. We next resorted to making a net out of packaging tape and heavy duty plastic bags. This solution, however, proved to be aesthetically unappealing. Over the weekend, we decided to make a net out of fabric with needle and thread. Another on-the-fly adjustment was the redesigning of our bottom ball corral. We originally had planned for a V-shaped understructure, however, we realized that the balls were rolling out the front of the tower. Therefore we added an additional piece of thin sheet metal to separate the ball corrals. These final few days we hope to get some practice in on the table and make any last minute adjustments. We will also be working on our introduction video as well.

Here is a picture of our machine with the tower fixed.
The net still remains to be made however.

We have receieved our order for high friction rubber wheels, which will be used as our rear wheels.
We opted to use the stock wheels as our front wheels itself, as they have low friction and hence, it will be easy to turn around. We tested our machine with the dual motor and our machine moved perfectly fine and even turning wasn't any issue.
However, while testing our gate we noticed that there wasn't enough torque to lift the gate up at all. Hence, we changed the gear ratio from 20:1 to 400:1. Hence, with an immense increase in torque, the gate is easily lifted now with great ease.
We have finished engineering the tower. however, we are now deciding about how to go about engineering the net that will be connected between the tower and the hole.

This week we have really made progress on our machine. In the beginning of the week we completed and finalized the MCM. Outside of the machine shop, we have already completed the remaining engineering for the rest of our concept. Ben and Harsh have already begun to manufacture the base of the machine, as well as the rear mounting area and axle system for the gear box. As of now, we hope to have almost all of our machine manufactured by the end of the coming week. Jeff and Haroon plan to begin construction of the tower module early next week.

Week 2
Our goal for this week has been to complete the MCM assignment, as well as the Motor lab.
Our MCM is our gate structure which will be connected to planetary gear box motor. According to our calculations, we will be using a 16:1 gear ratio which will provide us with a torque of 0.054N-m. Whereas, our required torque is 0.0282N-m. The speed of the motor as this torque will be 680 rpm.
Here are some of out manufactured parts

In the above pictures, our top plate on which the motor is attached.

We have also manufactured a bearing holder to which our shaft (displayed above) will be attached. The shaft will then be attached to our MCM(the front gate) which is yet to be manufactured.

We have to still decide the wheels that will be used to move our machine. Depending on the diameter and size of our wheels, our gate will have specific dimensions. Hence, this week we should mostly have decided upon the wheels and dimension the gate accordingly.

SCHEDULE:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsnR-tLKx5pZdC1YbnU1UkRvTFZnR0xMdmFXalRDWXc#gid=0