Posts Tagged ‘outreach

29
Jan
11

Surprise Shipment

I was on standby for Omax last night, unfortunately to no avail. However, this morning we were back on track to cut! Ken made it down there to start at 5 am. When he returned to school, he had with him the components for the second drive base frame, the lift and the arm. The lift as I spoke of yesterday was being welded.

With all of these shiny new toys at our disposal, we spent yet another Saturday hard at work. The drive team split, one group focused on pop-riveting the second frame, while the other group worked on the guts (wheels, chain, all that good stuff) for the first. Anyways, issues with Andy Mark’s wheel assemblies are providing setbacks, but no worries, we’ll pick up the pace and get the drive base ready!

This might be a good time to note, if you were not already aware (my bad), we are building TWO ENTIRE robots this year! :)

As for the Lift, with the new weldment picture frames here, we were certainly uplifted. Lift team members spent their time rising to the challenge of putting the assemblies together, this is also going to be an ongoing task. :)

As for the End Effectors, we now have all the design models prepared and the remaining CAD members are back into the old routine. Focusing on the model for submission is the next priority to this sub-team. Until parts are completed for those sub-assemblies, we’ll be working on our entire robot model. Also, exciting CAD news, we finally got Vault!

Electrical/Programming got the Ultrasonic sensor working and developed a pseudo-bumper for the practice robot.

What I hear from the systems kids is that the submission documents are getting a nice overhaul/update. Danny has iteration one of the scouting sheet pretty much set and Drew is busy filling in the holes of our past. SPEAKING OF WHICH: If you have any pictures from previous outreach events, please get them to him, along with info!

That’s about it, hope I’m not missing too much, I’ll do some patchwork on Monday, I’ll hopefully have more to report on!

25
Jan
11

It Lives!

Tonight was another straightforward get-things-done night. There was no real meeting beforehand, we just jumped into action. The Lift team began to cut and drill the pieces so they will soon be ready for welding. Meanwhile the Drive Base team continued on pop-riveting those 260+ holes together :) I’m already drooling over the beauty, see it for yourself:

The End Effector team continued to work on the designs and are currently on at least the 12th iteration of their models (That’s Design!) I finally got Alex to get me a render of the Inner Gripper, and the Bunny Hook has changed a lot. The designs are nearly complete, but we still need to incorporate the disc which is pneumatically driven to push the game piece off. We should hopefully have a lift and grippers going together by this weekend.

The arm model is also well on its way to fabrication as well. Soon, we shall be able to assemble the components and see how we’ll attach our End Effectors to the Lift! Everything is certainly looking clean and stylistic (notice the diamond trussing everywhere? You still haven’t seen it all.)

The pace is certainly refreshing and we’re definitely tackling our agenda on multiple fronts. Scott and Lydia went to Olympia today, along with members from other FIRST teams to support the program in front of legislators and representatives. Another non-robot related job we are currently tackling is the field. Its components were nearly completed tonight, and I’ll get some pictures up once everything is completed. For now we have a sample rack in Mr. Steele’s and this will suffice for visualization. It ends up getting used more as a coat rack and game piece holder however :)

Thanks again for keeping up with us, we’ll keep you posted!




Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.