As we ramp up testing, it’s time to buff up our robot…

The acrylic biceps cut early on were meant to be a rapid prototyped solution to be upgraded at a later point, serving only to get a working robot for software testing. However, we realized that acrylic possesses a few key qualities that make it a perfect material for the upper linkages:

1. It’s clear, so it doesn’t interfere with the machine vision searching for weeds.
2. It’s lightweight.
3. It’s inert (won’t rust or decompose).

The only downside to the current version of the biceps was that the acrylic sheet was too thin to put two bearings in, and so the elbow was prone to bend and snap. This weakness was addressed by laser cutting a slightly modified pattern of the bicep in a second sheet of acrylic, which was then laminated to the original piece using cyanoacrylate (the fancy term for Krazy Glue). A great coach once told me, if you want to be stronger, use the bicep press:

Tomorrow the biceps will be reinstalled on the delta arm and that will just about finish it off!