Beerpong Robot Update 4/27/2015

We have been hard at work on the Beerpong robot for my Applied Robotics Class and have gone through a couple of changes in the design.

Previously, we had planned on using a gravity fed, revolver style method for loading the ping pong balls into the barrel. But we found that there was a significant loss of power when test firing with the hole on top open, and the robot could only fire a ball halfway across the table at full power to the fan. We considered incorporating a servo actuated lid into the design for the revolver or adding additional "blank" tubes that would act as lids in between the actual tubes, but in the end we decided to go for a different approach, using two tubes that run parallel to the barrel to hold the ping pong balls.

We also did some testing for accuracy, and added a strip of electrical tape to the bottom of the barrel to give the ball some topspin.



After working over the weekend we have most of the mechanical frame assembled, and we verified that we could move the stepper motors and stop them with the limit switches.