2024 Fall Season Turret Blog
One of our advanced projects for the 2024 offseason is building a turret. This is a new subsystem for our team that we’ve never made before, so it was a steep learning curve for everyone involved in the project. Having a turret allows a greater range of motion and faster aiming and scoring, giving our robots more versatility and making scoring more efficient. Last year in Crescendo, many of the top teams had turrets, which gave them an edge in competitions. In previous years beyond that, there were several instances where having a turret gave teams a huge advantage over others. Our team decided to take two approaches to the project. Since this is our first time building a turret, we wanted to have a model for us to design our own. As a result, we purchased the GreyT turret from West Coast Products and then used the design philosophy of that turret to design our version from scratch, which would give us greater flexibility and freedom for design. The manufacturing process went well, but due to issues with assembly, backordered parts, and our project lead leaving the team, we decided to scrap the project and work with the GreyT turret instead, since it would be easier to assemble and test. Assembly went well, with only a few [...]