Design Challenge #4: Intake
Now, you’ve built a shooter, a gearbox for a pivot, and a drivetrain. For your next trick, you are going to be designing an intake. Some of you will remember last week where you designed a shooter for the 2026 game. Well, before you can shoot the balls you gotta get them into your robot.
While you may not have designed a shooter last week, don’t fret. Your job this week will be to design a slapdown style intake for the game piece. Make sure to include fasteners and proper power transmission. We do recommend that you sketch up to a theoretical shooter just to think about integration a little.
I can’t believe you all designed a shooter without the intake 🤦. Anyway, your job will be to design a 4-bar intake to intake these game pieces effectively. Preferably, you design this around your shooter that you made last week, so think about how to package with the space you left, along with the ideal ball path for your design. (Hint: Do a main layout sketch)
For both challenges: You may pivot using motors or pneumatics.
The game pieces are 6” rubber kickballs weighing 0.29lbs. Game Piece Product Page
Need Help?
If you are stuck, or have any questions, feel free to ask in the discord server! Same goes with getting your design looked over!
Good luck!