It had been yet another grueling but rewarding day of academics when the next leap in progress was made on the night of January 24th, 2025.

We would soon need to create a parts list, but of course the specs of the bulk of those parts would not be known until after the CAD model was complete. There was one component, however, that we knew we would need: compression springs...or so we thought—cue dramatic foreshadowing.

Thus, we tried our hand at calculating an estimate for the minimum spring constant required to keep the robot centered in the pipe:

This was quite tedious and confusing work for a Friday night, so a quick trip to Target seemed appropriate.

The cookies did not last long. And the "physics" soon became unnecessary in the face of good old fashioned trial and error. Onto the CAD model!