Team 24 - Conclusions & Future Work

While not perfect, our design accomplished most of the tasks we set out for. The complex motion profile we were looking for was achieved and the darts smoothly come out of the housing in the correct orientation. Our quick-release-type mechanism worked appropriately, and we implemented feedback control to keep the motor at an appropriate speed throughout its motion

With this said here are some improvements that we could make on our design. The first thing we would like to add to our mechanism would be a gearbox. Our current motor has just enough torque with the added rubber bands to complete the loop. The gearbox would give us the necessary torque to control the mechanism at all times. With this addition, our mechanism's motion would become much smoother and allow us to develop our feedback loop further. The gearbox would also partially increase the stability of the mechanism by stopping the jarring, partially uncontrolled motion that it currently has at some points in the loop.

To further increase the stability of the mechanism we would like to double the T-shaped link along with its ground. These additional links will reduce the side-to-side shaking that the mechanism has which can cause out-of-plane motion. Out-of-plane motion can damage the links and reduce the efficiency of our design. Snap bearings would also make the mechanism more stable than the current ones we are using.

Another addition we would like to make is to use a stepper motor instead of a DC motor. By using a stepper motor we could more accurately determine where in the loop the mechanism is. The encoders have a time delay that is large enough that the motor can partially lose track of where it is in the rotation.

The final thing we would like to add to the mechanism would be a reloading mechanism. Since the stability and control would have been greatly improved with the previous additions, this addition would be easy to add on after we finished the analysis for this new mechanism.