Thursday Work

Hello All,

Unfortunately we didn’t get to run the motors today to check our design, but we did get to have the robot pretty much done for the programmers. I am excited to see how it works. Just as a reminder, we are building two robots to have the less nice-looking one to practice with while the competition one is in the bag. When we get the robot to run (which will hopefully happen tomorrow), we will find problems and correct them before they are finalized on the other robot. That is why we are waiting to get other parts water jetted, in case we have major design changes which are likely to happen.

Anyway, in the shop, work was getting done on both the practice and the competition robot.

The competition bot is far ahead.  We ended tonight’s meeting ready to hand it off to the programmers except for a few wires and some last minute labeling. The picture below was what we got from fitting in some of the circuit breakers for the power distribution board and messing them around to see if one of the build guys noticed… He did.  From our point of view, he passes our test of attention to detail.

On the other side, the practice bot started getting wired and the chassis got some of its pneumatics re-adjusted. For any of you wondering out there, we are using pneumatics to run the tipper, shifting gears and possibly something related to changing the angle of our hood for the shooter (which will change the angle at which we shoot). This is something we still need to determine, as what we have built right now does not have the option of adjusting the hood.

Other exciting news includes this Saturday and Sunday which will be an open field day for other teams to come  to Aviation and test their robots.  About 6 teams are coming this year and I am excited to get to see some of the designs these teams made. Sometimes it is kind of shocking to realize the many ways a task can be completed.  Also, a really cool thing for us is that we are getting our practice shirts on Sunday for this year’s game and then Liam and I will be able to post a picture of the shirts

On another note, I am also excited about how tomorrow we will be water jetting the tipper at OMAX  and possibly a few other parts. In the meantime, at AHS we will have a crew of students staying after school to help set up the gym to accommodate the teams coming on Saturday.

Well, that is it for today. Thanks for sticking around!

Camila

Thursday – I’m feeling a little bloated…

To anyone who is black and white and really smells,

Hey!

Today was another 6-9 work day, although I actually had to leave a little early to finish homework. But still, here’s the blog!

The main issue, which is commanding quite a bit of attention these days, is the weight of the robot. I mentioned this last time, and it remains a huge issue. Just to remind everyone, the robot may not exceed 120lbs. This may seem really heavy, and it may not. But let me assure you, it is really hard to make a robot that does everything you want it to and keep it under 120lbs. To give you an idea of the heavy dieting being done by certain skunks these days, we have trussed literary every piece of material on our robot. We even trussed out our poly-carbonate side panels, saving a few precious ounces. And believe me, it seems like we might need every ounce we can get.

On another note, we travel to OMAX again tomorrow to have another awesome opportunity to work with the machines and the great people who work there, and have our conveyor panels cut out along with the pieces for our shooter mechanism. After that, there might be one more trip but we will have all of the pieces that are crucial to making our robot run. I will be going again tomorrow, and I will probably have a special post, even though it is Camila’s night, not to talk so much but I will post a lot of pictures. As before, i’m excited.

An update on the sub teams:

• You guys pretty much know all about the Design team, again the main hurdles right now are the weight, finishing up design and cutting at OMAX and building in the shop.
• The Marketing team continues to produce awesome additions to the web site. They have re-named the link to this blog to “Behind the Smell.” (Clever huh?)
• The Programming team, though this is just rumors because no one ever actually sees them, (just joking, I’m pretty sure I know where they are) has done an excellent job on creating code for the Kinect, and is just days away from having a working and de-bugged code for the drive base.
• The Systems Integration team is chugging away on award proposals, but mainly focusing their power on the Business Plan and the Chairman’s Award. In fact, a certain Mrs. Burke took time away from her angel of a son to share her expertise at written communications and came in to help Drew and Paula with those very projects. Thanks Mrs. Burke!
• The field build team is doing a Bang-up job (with hammers… get it?) of creating an awesome practice field, and so far have not run into any major snags, knock on wood. (haha I just can’t help myself)

Well, I’ll pass the ball (tehehe) to Camila for tomorrow night, but you will get pictures from me around eight or nine. See ya, and:

Stay Smelly!

Liam Burke