We all get that Friday feeling. Even IT rock 'n' roll superstar tech consultants who work from home. But when you have a certain brand to upkeep, and that brand is doing everything in an overly-complicated, entirely tech-reliant fasion, you can't just open a beer like a normal person and enjoy yourself. You have to create a robot that not only tilts your glass to avoid any head, but also another that pours the beverage out into the glass for you.
And misses.
At least 5 times.
We had previously built a sky tractor out of K’NEX, but it kept getting itself stuck on the tram line system we had developed.
To fix this issue we improved:
- The rail system, using train rails instead of tram lines. We found that 3D-printing our own custom, bumpy track gave us the high traction a sky tractor requires.
- The axles. The K’NEX axles began bowing under the weight of motors, magnets and frying pans, so we used metal rods instead (we think it’s aluminium, Pete’s dad had them lying around in his garage).
- The wheels. To connect to the axles we designed and printed our own 3D wheels that interfaced with our new metal axles and the K’NEX tires. We 3D-printed bushings and clamps to secure them to the axle.
All parts were designed in OpenSCAD and printed using our Creality CR10. The body of the sky tractor is currently wood, as we needed to get it up and running as quickly as possible.
Testing the traction of the new system, we hooked up the tipper (the unit with the Peroni attached) to the back of the sky tractor and towed aour beer into position. The position was often very inaccurate.
Most of the response on social media to the video was anger at how much beer we wasted, and that we should have tested it with water first. But, in our defense, we didn't think of that.