Oh man… no more OMAX

Hey Everybody!

There was no official meeting tonight, but a few of us went to OMAX to cut out the last of the parts. This was the final trip to OMAX for this season.  I want to again thank Kevin and the entire group that stays at work late and helps us out.  Our group was smaller than usual, with Ken, Aiden, me, and my partner in blogging crime, Camila. Tonight was especially cool because the Operator Interface and shear panels were cut, each of which have cool truss patterns and “SKUNKWORKS ROBOTICS” on them, along with sponsor names and our team number. As an aside, we put FRC in front of our team number, to spread the word. Yay for Dean’s Homework! But there is something really cool about an idea going from your mind, to a visual on the computer, to a piece of metal in your hand. Three cheers for OMAX!

Tonight’s cut was a bit quicker than usual; there were fewer parts, and the parts that we needed were smaller. I learned a lesson though.  If you don’t CAD a feature into the part, it isn’t going to magically appear just because you want it to. With the shear panel that goes on the conveyor, some of the letters like O and B, had parts in the middle that would fall out if you didn’t put a tab keeping them in. That happened with the 8 too… oh well. Also, I managed to drop one of our pieces into the tank as I was cleaning it. After a very gentlemanly ”Drat”, I told the guys and we had to cut a new part.

In a moment of sheer brilliance, I totally forgot to take pictures of the parts to post for you guys, so I will do a special post around noon tomorrow with the pictures. Speaking of tomorrow, we have an open house tomorrow with our now finished field (YAY!).  So if your robot is done, or even if it still needs some work, come over and we’ll do all we can. I’ll be there at 9 am, and people will start going home around 3:00 pm most likely. In any event, have a productive and stress free last few days of the build season, and please,

Stay Smelly!!

Liam Burke

Monday – Fun day

Hey Everyone!

Everyone arrived tonight with eyes fresh from a weekend of rest, ready to get to work! Not really of course, but there are smiles all the same. Time for Robotics!

As Camila noted in her last post, we made quite a bit of progress this weekend. All the shop-goers were greeted to a drive base mostly finished, and a shooter mounted and upright. Steve brought in some picture frame clamps that sped up our side-panel frame construction, and Jake Hecla, along with other students and mentors, did a great job at finishing most of our ABS conveyor rollers.

The Programming team was also very productive. Under the leadership of Davis, the team got much farther on the development of a working autonomous, and did work on integrating the gyro into their code. It is rough work though, or so I hear, as the team “broke” the test robot three times. Nice work team!

The Build team is getting farther and farther along also. I took some pictures that are below, and as you can tell the field is starting to look quite a bit like the real thing. Another massive job, by the way, is the painting of the field. Everything is painted in the signature black and white, and it is quite the job.

The Systems Integration team is doing brilliant work on the scouting plan, specifically, and is getting farther on scouting in general. Drew Wall has been the hero of the Chaiman’s Submission, and is almost done. We all keep our fingers crossed where Chairman’s is concerned; it would be awesome to win it.

That is pretty much it for today, so stay tuned! The season is slowly nearing the end, and everyone here awaits competition season with bated breath. So root for us, and definitely,

Stay Smelly!

Liam Burke

A pitched battle occurs on the practice field.

 

The hoops are up. Now all we need is someone to make a shot!

 

Hard at work, painting the field

 

Lots of computers and some water. That's all the programming team needs, right?