Tracer Wheel

The tracer wheel assembly (Figure 1) was necessary to determine the ROBO MAT’s exact location in the bore. The entire assembly consist of three 3D printed parts, one encoder, one torsion spring, two high precision bearings, and two rotary shafts. The three 3D printed parts shown in blue (Figure 1) are the tracer wheel, the wheel arm, and the hinge/chassis mount. The most important element of the tracer wheel assembly was the high resolution, 360 CPR encoder. As the cart traveled through the bore, the encoder recorded the rotation of the tracer wheel and sent the data it recorded to the Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi then converted the CPR to mm, which was displayed on the cart operator’s computer.