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Today we continued to work on our tower designs for the lifting mechanism. We shifted the design after Lyle brought up some concerns about strength of our rail design. We have a design in the computer number 5 noteboook that has four 80/20 "rails" arranged in a square formation and we have chosen new sliders that surround them on 3 sides (they can be found on the BOM). The piston "holder" fits between these four 80/20 bars and the bars are reinforced by triangular guards madeof sheet metal (see picture). The winch will attach to the top of the "holder".  We have completed designs and all that is left with the towers is mapping out dimensions and working with the other teams to ensure that everything integrates. We began to tackle the large challenge today of creating the winch and pulley system. One of the main issues was finding a way to be able to stop the cable at each level without destroying the motor or the robot electrical system. We investigated both a mechanical stop and a worm gearbox. In the end we decided to go with the worm garbox, even though it was less expensive, we were unable to come up with an effective design for the mechanical stop that would allow for us to stop at each of the stacking level. We still need to add dimensions to our designs and create the winch layout. We also began to research different options for a spool that will go on to the output shaft.

note: the gearbox may come in blue! :D

• finished rail design
• finished most of tower design
• researched winch solutions
• chose to go with worm gearbox
• researched spools
• continued to add all chosen items to scratch BOM

We have no idea how the winch system will be arranged on the robot. Also none of the pictures/designs have dimensions and these need to be discussed with each team before final dimensions can be added. find a spool! We need to create a "coupler" of some sort to connect the output shaft of the gearbox to the spool. 

Talk to all other subteams to finalize dimensions on at least the towers. Create winch layout! Find a spool, prefereably from a less sketchy site than "spoolon.com." Begin designing sheetmetal walls if possible, talk to Lyle and Kavi about this especially. We must maintain integration! 

Still ahead of schedule yay :D