Over break I didnt do much for the first half. I mostly just relaxed and slept in. I celebrated christmas with my family and celebrated new years at Ryan's house. But then. As soon as the new year started I became very busy. On the 3rd I went off to Mountain high ski resort up in Wrightwood for two days. I had two full days of snowboarding and I made a lot of progress. Then The thursday and friday after that I went camping with friends on the kern river just outside of bakersfield. I had to leave friday night while the rest stayed one more night. I had to rush home so the next morning I could get up really early to go to robotics kickoff. It also happened to be my birthday on the 7th. So then to finish of my break I had robotics on saturday and sunday. All in all a very good break with a good balance of relaxation and play.
Week 20
1/9/17
Today in class some of the people in the robbotics club talked about the game this year and showed them the video. This year's game has a steampunk theme to it. The game came out last saturday and so far we've analyzed the point scoring and come up with some general ideas to score. We have Mr. Abrahms and Molly helping us running us through a process which we have never done before that I think will go well.
1/10/17
Today Mr. Miller introduced the idea of using google sites instead of using HTML for websites. Im very content using my HTML(it makes me feel cool (it also looks a lot more impressive doing it)) Many people were having trouble signing in so we helped them with that.
1/11/17
Today in class it was wednesday so for the first time in a long while I did a wednesday challenge. The challenge was to cut out a square as close to perfect as possible out of cardboard. Each side should be 12 inches. I was paired up with Dimitrius for this. We did some math and found some other measurements such as the diagonal and we just used as many of those to ensure we had the right angles. Getting 12 inch sides is the easy part.
My wednesday challenge form
1/12/17
Today Mr. Miller did more talking about google sites because we didnt get very far with the problems people were having. Since I am still happy with HTMl I helped a few people with some problems then read the robotics game manual which can be found here. I am one of 5 people considered a "rule czar". We're a group of people that are supposed to know the manual cover to cover... supposed to. I know the most important rules so far but I have a lot of learning to do. Ill also need all of this for the driver test.
1/13/17
Today in class some of the people in the club did another talk about what had happened since the last time we talked. We showed them some of our ideas and concepts so far and got input from them. We also explained our process in more depth and explained the use of it in other situations in engineering. Our process involved taking the concepts and estimating point values that each could get then we came up with different factors(reliability, studiness, etc.) And graded them on a scale of +2 to -2 with the first one being a 0.
Week 21
1/16/17
Today Mr. Miller talked more about using google sites and he had kirk help him compare it to using HTMl with CSS. The vets went into the CAD cave to work on their websites so that's what I did. I set up my second semester page and created my main page with the links to each semester.
This is part of the prototyping going on in the club
1/17/17
Today Kevin and I went into the shop to work on prototyping for the robot for the club. We worked on revising and getting better measurements through testing and thinking. Then during 6th period we worked on getting our findings into a CAD. We worked out some final dimensions for the funnel to catch the gear most reliably and the easiest. Autodesk was causing problems so we almost finished but we didnt get all the way done. Hopefully kevin can fix that tonight at the meeting.
1/18/17
Today was the wednesday challenge but there was stuff to do for robotics. So Cole worked on getiing stephanie, an old robot, working again. He was unsuccessful but Kevin and I were very successful. We talked about the different volumes we could choose for our robot and the pros and cons of each one. We think we'll go with a shorter robot thats longer and more stable. With our revised gear funnel it caused problems withh my concept so I did some thinkng and realized all of my problems can be fixed if we just put it on the back. I ended up with this cad.
1/19/17
Today kevin and I continued to do more work with the robot cad. We started implementing the other parts into a final cad to show off. We implemented the gear catcher into the chassis and we also got most ofthe way to implementing the ball pusher. Tonight I presented the idea and it went about as well as it could have. It ended up being just me in front of everyone. I got a lot of questions fired at me by mentors but I fired back well... or so I'm told.
1/20/17
Today the robotics group did another presentation to the class. We started off by watching the video once again. We then showed off our desing progress by showing them the CAD we made of the robot. We then opened up to the class for questions and comments. We gained confidence with our design because any question they were able to come up with we were able to answer it with something we had already done, plan to do, or something we considered and why we decided to not do it.
Week 22
1/23/17
Today Kevin and I worked on the CAD some more and we keep on finding stuff to add or change. That continued to happen for most of the meeting. Also at the meeting a group of us started work on a KOP chassis that electronics and software can use to test stuff.
1/24/17
Today in class I finshed up the kop (Kit of Parts) chassis that I started last night. We decided to make the chassis so that electronics and programming could do tests with it. Cole and Ian worked on trying to get alice going. And of course, kevin is still workoing on CAD for the robot.
1/25/17
Today was the wednesday challenge where the class comes up with an idea for the robotics handout, a small gift we give to other teams every year. I was one of the judges, but the judging didnt happen until the end. So, for most of the period I worked on both the CAD and Alice. I helped kevin work on the cad to do more with the ball moving mechanism. Also, I worked with Cole on trying to get alice, one of our old robots, to work again. At the end we went to judge, we didnt get through every group so we'll have to finish tomorrow.
1/26/17
Today kevin and I spent the entire period trying to get stuff to 3D print on our dremel 3d printer. The problem is that it uses a specal file called a .g3drem file which is a proprietary file type and was a pain in the ass to finally get it to work. We had to go through so many different programs and websites and technical glitches that we were essentially dead by the end of the day. At the meeting we met our first big deadline which was to get a first draft of CAD done so I'm very happy about that and the design reveiew we had. Also, fab actually started cutting metal which is another big step forward for us.
1/27/17
Today we gave another presentation to the class about what we did. We watched the video once again and people complained but it was good. We explained our progress we made in the last week again. We showed the cad again and we showed off stephanie (one of the older robots) which has the capability to score balls in the low goal. Cole explained what he has been doing in restoring other old robots as well.
Week 23
1/30/17
Today in both the class and the club we continued to measure and cut more pieces for the chassis, we started dilling some holes. The chassis is supposed to be done tomorrow but its basically impossible for that to happen. We'll do what we can and just keep going.
1/31/17
Today at the beginning of the meeting I worked with a group trying to get the pit assembled again after all the painting was done. They just needed someone tall and I was the closest so I did that and then went back to work in fab, working on more measuring and cutting pieces. The chassis was supposed to be done today but that wass a very unreasonable schedule estimate. With the proximity to the point where we could start working from cad, we only had two days. So we'll just have to work harder for the next week.
2/1/17
Today there wasnt a meeting but a few of us met after school still to get some more work done. Today was the wednesday challenge for the class and it was to come up with actual designs for the handout. I worked on robot during the period so thats the extent of my knowledge there. We're rushing too much and we're making mistakes which is costing us more time. We need to slow down.
2/2/17
Today at the beginning of the meeting cole and I finished the pieces we started on during class. I spent the rest of the time helping other people mill their pieces and also going around to other subteams and being kind of a fab representative just communicating where we are and what we need. Towards the end of the meeting I finally mounted the power box to the new mill we got so we can just put a vice on it and get it to work. That will allow us to get a lot more output. I also helped electronics and software get a camera on the test bot I made. Also, in other news, CAD finshed for once, which is a problem, because now fab is the only group to blame now for falling behind.
2/3/17
Today in class we presented our finished CAD which was pretty cool, we also talked about our progress with our pieces. During the meeting it was just getting as much work done as possible, we're still behind and we need to get a robot done. We're almost finished with the pieces for the bottom part of the chassis. Our big problem right now is only one mill I really want to get the other one working really soon.
Week 24
2/6/17
Over the weekend I got the vise on the other miill and got that working. But at the end of the day something weird happened and it sarted arcing. But today it worked with no adjustment so it works again, our output is nearly doubled. Today we got the bottom part of the chassis welded together! We used our wilton blocks to align it with large axles we had. That allowed us to get very close to square. We measured corner angles but forgot to check diagonals before welding. We got lucky beccasue when we were done we were only an 1/8th off over 37 inches. It was cole and I that tacked it together and then some others joined us and we welded it fully together.
2/7/17
Today A group started to put the second layer on the chassis. They didnt have wilton blocks so they had to be more worried about how to be square. They were pretty close and definitely within tolerance for those pieces. I worked on miscellaneous pieces for the upper frame throughout the day. There's a crap load of pieces that still need to be made. I don't know if we're going to meet our thursday deadline but I'll keep trying and pushing.
2/8/17
Today I started working on some angled pieces for the frame. There are three pairs of angled pieces that I need to make the first set is just angled bars for the back so our robot isnt a boring rectangle. Getting the angle accurate is a lot of work and took a long time so for the sake of trying to get the robot done on time for the other angled pieces we're going to loosen our tolerances slightly. The only thing that would happen with not perfect angles is the welders need to fill a small gap.
2/9/17
Today was our original hopeful date for getting the frame done but we didnt. There's still a lot of pieces to make. This robot has 90 pieces which is 3 times what were used to. TOday I finished the first angled pieces and also did the second set of angled pieces. These are cross supports that go on the side of the robot that provide stability by turning our trapezoid and turning it into two trianlges. The throuble with these was that the angle was so steep that I anctually had to mill the angles by going side to side so I had to make sure the angles were adjusted correctly.
2/10/17
Today we presented again. Today we showed off the botom chassis and the test robot to the class. At the meeting I continued to do more work on the angled bars. This is the last set that I need to do. These bars are the ones that hold up the ball mechanism so they're not only angled but they have a lot of holes. Luckily, they're all equally spaced so I was able to crank those holes out pretty quickly. (sorry about the lack of pictures this week. I was really busy working on pieces)
Week 25
2/13/17
Today there wasnt school so we had an extended meeting. Jessy, Cole, and I had an extra time in the morning when team 2404 brought their chassis up to weld becasue their welder broke. After that our meeting started and a group of us welded the rest of our frame together. We did some practice welds and based off of those Mr. Miller gave each of us specialties. Jacob and I did corners, Jessy did flats, and Cole did angles. At the end of the meeting we hung the robot up outside and we spray painted it. This is the second year in a row that we've haad a painted robot and our third painted robot ever. While we were painting work was being done on the gear mech and the wedge.
2/14/17
Today was finally the day of reckoning. It's start of assembly. The frame is doen and painted and so we can finally start putting on components. We used this time to teach soem underclassmen how to assemble a robot. We showed them how to do one side then they did the other side with little guidance. This is all a part of the larger project of succession planning. We got the wheels, gearboxes, motors, pulleys, and belts on. We also put on the electronics board which fit pretty well. And, we also got the center plate for the ball mechanism on as well. It fits well. It will need a lot of adjusting to get it right and parallel but we will do that soon. A lot of work was done today and we made a lot of good progress.
2/15/17
Today there was no meeting but during the period we got the wedge mounted on the sliders and after a lot, I mean a lot of tweakign we were able to get it to slide pretty easily. We had to drill out some holes so that we could reach the full distance. We also had soem trouble finding the right screws to use. The ones we first had were very close to right so we got frustrated with them before finding the actual ones. There was a lot of downtime since the sub kept walking away and we couldnt do much real work while he was away. Though we were also able to cut of the extra width on the wedge so it can actually slide the full length. And we also cut the slides themselves slightly shorter so they dont interefere with teh gear mech.
2/16/17
Today at lunch was the first time we drove the robot and that was a lot of fun but it has so much torque it started to bend the motor plates so we used some churros (technical name) to attatch the motor places to each other which made them a lot more rigid. During 5th period we cut the wedge to size since with the lexan it started to scrape a little bit. We also expanded out the holes for the screws to hold on the sliders; this allowed for a lot smoother slide. At the meeting we got all the idler sprocket wilton blocks finished and we almost finished the pieces for the gear mech. Kevin was able to get the motor mounted and one idler sprocket. At lunch we also did a test fit of the bumpers.
Video creds to Kevin
2/17/17
Today we did our first whole tests. of the robot and it works really well. All of the pieces move the way that theyre supposed to. Theres some bugs that need to be worked out in code but those shouldnt take too long. Cole and I got all of the pieces for the gear mech together and welded them up and drilled holes in the polycarbonate for it. Tomorrow we can rivet it in and then the gear mech will be done. We were suppposed to have the La Canada scrimmage today but it didnt happen because off the rain...
Video creds to Kevin
Week 26
2/20/17
Today was the scrimmage at La Canada. Before we had a meeting during which we did the physical driver's test. THe test was good, focusing on the dexterity of the driver and a little bit of decision making. To improve vision for the camera on the gear side cole and I cut angles on the top so it didnt block the camera's view. The scrimmage was a lot of fun and really satifying to see our robot do so well. It did everything we needed it to and it did them all beautifully. We did discover one small problem with the gear mech though. Two angled plates that were intended to push the gear fully onto the spike dont really do that and theyll sometimes just prevent the gear from coming out smoothly soo tomorrow we're going to take those off.
2/21/17
Today is bag and tag day. We cut off the plates on the gear mech that were causing probblems last night. And we also put on all of the last minute touches, we made the bumpers easier to put on and take off and wwe mounted the warning light. The bag and tag ceremony was a lot of fun and pretty emotional. It's my last year and its a great robot. I couldnt be happier with how it turned out. Now I actually can get some sleep at night now that its over though. It was a great season and now I'm just lookong forward to competition. But Im gonna go sleep now.
2/22/17
Disclaimer: I was not a participant in this wednesday challenge, I was a judge. Today was the start of the "E" wednesday challenge but this year they have to make a capital "A". Kevin, Kirk, and I are the judges. Today Dr. neat explained the challenge to them and they did their CADs. We collected them all and we started to pass them out. We also created a system to rank them and a spreadsheet to lay it all out. The Cad below is our simple A showing the different places we measured for accuracy. We take the differnece between actual and CAD and add all of the differences up and subtract the total from 10.
2/23/17
Today was the second day of the challenge at the beginning we started by passing out the rest of the CADs for them to build and there were a lot and a few complications so it took a while but eventually we got there. Then during sixth and a little bit after school kevin and I measured the cardboard As and put the data into the spreadsheet. The group at the top is all very close. There were a few disqualified due to absences or building the wrong CAD. There were also 2 As that we did not get so we'll se what Dr. Neat wants us to do about those As and if we should let them have another day.
2/24/17
Today Dr. Neat started the class by showing a video about the 7 new planets that were discovered. He then talked about it for a little bit. WHile that was hapenning Kevin and I put the finishing touches on the spreadsheet for the scores of the wednesday challenge. We then did a short presentation on the scores then the rest of the period was spent working on websites.
Here's the score spreadsheetWeek 26
2/27/17
Today kevin and I did work on the CAD for the climbing mechanism for the robot We got the basic idea worked out, with the bars and placement of motor and axle. Then at the meeting that night we tried to figure out how to do a direct gear driven system but it was too hard. The gears we needed were both really heavy and really expensive so at the end of the night we decided that tomorrow we will scrap thhe gears and try something else to get the power to the axle.
2/28/17
Today kevin and I did more work with the CAD for the climber and we decided to use a chain driven mechanism instead of gears becasue it would be cheaper and also much more light weight. While kevin did the CAD of the that cole and I did some testing of our axles, in the picture below you can see our method, we put the axle in a loop in the rope ad then I stood on it putting most of my weight on the ends. We then rolled the axels on the ground to see if they got bent. We found that a 3/8" steel axle will probaby be our best combination oof strength and lightness. At the meeting Mr. Gordon taught us some math and had us put it into a spreadsheet so we could test out different systems in the spreadsheet.
3/1/17
Today was the wednesday challenge, we had to use at least 3 sections of cardboard in order to create a "boat tail" We were given some equations to help us but our team had a lot of trouble trying to figure out how to apply them so we just started prototryping towards the end of the period. We learned some good stuff with our prototyping that I think will help us out tomorrow.
3/2/17
Today we started on our actual cone and we decided tp make it bigger than our prototype becasue one of the things we learned is that the smaller the cone, the harder it is to get in a circle. We also learned to flatten out our cardboard to make it easier as well. At the end of our build we wrapped it in tape to make it more smooth.
3/3/17
Today was a website day. But kevin and I did more work with the climber implementing some ideas Mr. Gordon gave us in an email. We also packed for an event after school. After school there was a GUSD FLL event that we went to to show off our robot to the kids to try to get them to continue to stay in the robotics program.
Week 27
3/6/17
On saturday Cole, Kevin, and I had a meeting with Mr. Gordon during the robotics meeting and in the end we decided to go with a worm gear driven mechanism. Today Mr. Gordon came in and went over an email he sent with us and he talked to us about the different types of bearings we would use in different spots on the climbing mechanism. We made a few changes to our mechanism and got most of the work done changing our CAD over to the worm drive. At the meeting we realized we made a miscalculation and we had to change our diameter of our shaft.
3/7/17
Today Kevin and I continued to do more work on optimization of the design for the climber. I also spent some time doing packing for robotics, checking we have what we need and whatnot. I only know what a few subsystems need so I did what a could but most of the other subsytems need to pack their own boxes.
3/8/17
Today was the first day of the infamous potato chip transport wednesday challenge. We introduced them to the challenge and Dr. Neat told them the story of the Unibomber incident. We passed out chips for them to look at and they started doing some rough designs.
3/9/17
Today was a design day for the participants and towards the end of class we actually collected the first few finished designs but there are a lot more that need to be collected, we're working on a way that will be more efficient for us to swap over files to get that done quicker than we have done in the past.
3/10/17
Today we collected the rest of the files to build the boxes for the challenge. It went pretty quickly and we seem to have a good system for getting the files around and transfered in an efficient manner as to reduce teams' downtime.
Week 28
3/13/17
3/14/17
Today was another build day for the people. I spent my time doing some packing for robotics and making a lot of buttons for the club because competition is coming up really soon.
3/15/17
Today was the end build day for the challenge, we put on the labels, made sure we could ship them, disqualified a few for various reasons and the best part was we threw them off a balcony as an initial stress test. You could get a pretty good sense of which ones are going to do well and which ones arent from that single test. After school a group of us went to ventura college for load in and pit setup. It went pretty well, we got our robot bag checked off and the pit went up fairly easily so all in all we're doing pretty good and are mostly ready for tomorrow getting ready for inspection.
So ventura was a pretty average regional. It was a bit of a rocky start but it's okay considering how little practice we had with the robot. In preliminary checks we found our robot was grounded to the frame which isnt allowed so we fixed that and once that was fixed inspection was a total breeze. In total we played 11 matches with cole and his drive team starting and ending. While there we had a beach party with La Canada like last year which was a lot of fun. Our robot performed the way we designed it to. It scored gears, it scored balls and we did what we said we could do. It was all just somebad luck that put us at tenth to last but still a fantastic experience. In terms of awards we ended up wining the imagery award which was really cool and suddenly made all of that sanding of the pit worth it. Thanks to asthetics for that one. BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY MARTOS WON WOODIE FLOWERS!!! About damn time too.
Here are the things we got for the imagery award
Spring Break
Over spring break I didnt do much, I hung out with friends a lot but other than that it was just a lot of relaxing and chillng.
Week 30
3/27-28/17
These two days I worked with Ian to get the outer shaft for the climber done, it was a good experience using the mill since that is a tool we dont usually use. It took a long time because making a half inch hole 4 inches long requires a lot of material to be removed. AFter we bored out the center hole for the steel shaft I then drilled the three holes in the side for the set screws and our long bolt.
3/29/17
Today is load in day for OC. During the period and 6th Mr. Gordon, Kevin, and I worked on assembling the climber with all the pieces we have. The assembly went about at planned. It was complicated because of all the small pieces but it got together. After school a group went to do load in while Mr. Gordon, Kevin, Ryan, Ally, and I stayed behind to do testing and work on the climber.
Orange county was an exciting regional. It was also frustrating, fun, and everything else engineerign is. At the start Kevin, Cole, and I worked on the robot to get the climbing mechanism installed. We got soem help from kiran too for electronics. It took longer than expected but we got it instaled and moving within reasonable time. Our inspection went even quicker than Ventura. Then we went to test our climber. Sadly it didnt work. We tried so many different things from velcro to tapering the edges of our drum, but nothing worked for us. It was pretty heartbreaking to see all of the hard work and hopes go to nothing. Through the rest of the competition we were able to hold our own. We did what we were designed to at the best of our abilities, and that is what 589 is about, not the first rank 3309 Friairbots but we do what we do really well. While we did not do too well in terms of ranks the Fridolins were doign really awesome. It was a lot of fun to cheer for them. WHat made it better is that the Rank 1 team chose htem for alliance and they ended up winnong the entire thing. It was kind of like we won it becasue of how close they are to us. So they got to go onto champs. But then... PLOT TWIST!! We won the regional engineering inspiration award which puts us through to champs. Im not done driving yet...
Week 31
4/3-6/17
So Im way behind on my website, during the first part of this week some of worked on a cad for the new climber to hope to see if we can actually climb at champs. We also finished the potato chip challenge, we weighed the boxes and cut them open and inspected the chips and gave everyone their final score. for the competition. I made a new outer shaft for the climber since we modified the last one at competition and we need a new one. to give us the original diameter we're looking for.
4/7/17
Today Mr. Gordon came in and we discussed the final details of the climber. We talked about the friction on the bearings we were going to use and the issues that presented. I also did some work on the climber itself. I fabricated the nut we're going to use for the racheting mechanism by drilling out the threads and adding in a side hole for a key screw. In order to have enough material to hold the screw in I had to put the hole in the corner which presented its own problems because drill bits would just bend out of the way so I had to start with the centering bit. I ended up finishing that shortly after school and all that is left is to cut the keyway on the nut but Mr. Gordon is going to do that at home.
Week 32
4/10/17
Okay, so I apologize for my absence from my website for this past while. I've just been supoer occupied with robotics trying to make things as good as they can be for ventura, OC, and now champs. The climber has really been a @!*$#. I will fix this immediately and I will do as much as I can from now on. Today in class it was block schedule so we had 2 hours of engineering. At lunch the FedEx guy came and took away Athanatos to ship him off to Houston. We then worked on our websites for the rest of the time since almost all of the vets are behind on their websites.
4/11/17
Today was block schedule periods 2, 4, and 6. So we didnt have engineering. After school I took a nap and went to the magic castle for young adults night.
4/12/17
Today the veterans all worked on their websites for two hours since it was block schedule. We found out who is going to be in oour division at champs so we did a little bit of looking at that too. We also have a new student from philadelphia, I cant remember his name but he's a cool guy.
4/13/17
Today was block schedule so we didnt have engineering so I worked on my website a bit at home since I got out really early, I also took a much needed nap to try to catch up on some sleep.
4/14/17
Today we disassembled the pit into sections that would make it easy to transport to Houston and put together once we got there. We also labeled any pieces that werent already labled to make sure this time there was no way we could mess it up.
Week 33
4/17/17
On sunday there was a party for packing the van the Gordons are going to drive to Houston. I couldnt go because I was spending Easter with family. After some thinking, I thought it would be a good idea to make a new drum for the climber even smaller than the one we already had just in case we needed more torque. Basically it was just a last minute ditch effort to guarentee that the climber would climg, maybe just really slowly.
4/18/17
Today I finshed up the new drum because the lathe was giving us issues so it took us a really long time. But I eventually got it done in time. I just hope I can get this through security without too much hassel. Tonight we leave for Houston! At 7 we met at the shop and then from there we headed to the airport. we got on the plane at 11:30 ish and took off around 11:50.
WE DID A THING!
Wednesday
So we got to houston ridiculously early, like 5:30 (3:30 our time) and i got about half an hour of sleep on the plane. We then went to the hotel. There was was some downtime and T got another 1.5 hours of sleep, but that was it. A small gorup of us were off to the convention center to get everything loaded in and the pit set up. We had a terrible time trying to get the pit up. The back was higher than the front and some pieces just werent going together all the way. We eventually said "screw it, good enough" and moved on with our lives, we put up the decorations and shelves and whatnot. After the bare minimun was in we started work on the new climber. No holes had to be drilled because the new plates had the same bolt patern. We mounted everything up with the gearbox and it spun! It was finniky to get together but we eventually did. We put the robot through inspection and this time it was even faster than OC. We then only had time to do basic checks before our scheduled practice match. At the match we had connection issues and couldnt do anything. But hen we got back in line and we were able to play this time. And WE CLIMBED. our first actual test of the clmer was in our practice match and it worked!! We all went back to the hotel at that point because we were al tired. For me I had 2 hours of sleep in the past 38 hours by the end...
Thursday
Today was the first day of qualification matches. Cole started the matches again and we had 4 matches today. We each had two and they all went pretty well. We only won the first one but there is so much chance in these games you cant really Be too upset with the wins vs losses. Rankings rarely reflect how well you actually do. In my first match i ended up knocking out two robots, one for most of the match and another for a short time. We really were able to prove our defensive capabilities which is something not most teams could do well so that was a good match for us despite our loss. After the matches were done we headed over to the Fridolin's hotel with them for pizza and to hang out. After that we headed out to the welcome party that was being put on. On the way we saw Woodies Flowers which was really cool because martos won his award. The party was pretty fun but we spent most of our time at the silent disco.
Friday
Today was the second day of qualification matches.We had 6 today, once again, startng with cole. Today was just a really good day. Today I had my two favorite matches ever. For one of Cole's matches an alliance partner's gear mechanism was in pieces when we had to queue so we gave them our second gear meachanism so we ziptied it on, got them inspected and they got to the field as the doors were closing. We still lost that match but I'm really proud of that. However, in one may matches our third alliance partner didnt show up at all, to make matters worse, we were going up against the rank 3 team. We knew we weren't going to win so in a last minute strategy change we were going to go full defence after our autonomous gear and our alliance partner was going to focus etirely on gears and we were going to see what we could do. A little but into the match I ended up hitting the 3rd place team so hard they lost connection and werent able to move for most of the rest of the match. We were using a new rope because our old one was getting frayed. And we climbed but then we fell. The robot was perfectly fine though. Thanks to our robust engineering and building. Becasue of all the robots I disabled over the past two ddays i started getting called the robot killer. After that was my last match. I didnt realize it but it was really close throughout the match and we only ended up winning by 15 points at the end. Thaat was my first win of champs and it was such a great match too.
Probably the most fun I've ever had in a match.
My last match ever :(
Saturday
Today started off with alliance selection, we didnt get selected. We did our best but in a world surrounded by regional winners we didnt really expect to get picked. After that we packed up our pit and loaded everything into the truck the Gordons had. We watched the finals matches for Newton and as expected 118 won newton. After that we all went to lunch and wen we came back we headed over to Minute Maid park, home of the Houston Astros, for Einstein. The top six teams played each other and after those 15 mattches the top two played each other. Of course 118 was one of the teams. They were expected to win however they made strategy mistakes and their last match they lost because of 175 pentalty points. Definately an upset. After that there was a huge firework show that was just amazing. After we left we had to say goodbye to the fridolins. We got back close to midnight and ordered pizza. A very emotional time for me and definately a few others.
Sunday
Today we had a free day and so we went to johnson spaceflight center which waas just absolutely incredible. SO much cool stuff we saw. They had two tours, we all went on the blue tour and then some of us went on the red tour as well. We saw mission control for the ISS, a saturn V rocket which was just ridiculously huge but we also saw the Robonauts shop. The team that came in second place. I took a ludicrous amount of pictures and in reviewing them I noticed a few things that we can learn from them. Good things to bring up at our "what can we do better" meeting. Overall a really fun and cool trip with some great people. And overall a great way to sepnd my last day in Houston.
Monday
Today we came home. A sad day but one still filled with a lot of fun. The leadership consortion plus Jessy rode the bus to the airport with Mr. G while everyone else rode in mentor cars. Everything was pretty uneventful and went smoothly. A great end to a fantastic trip. A bittersweet ending knowing how great it was but also how it really is the end for me. :,)
In conclusion
A completely unforgettable last season and just an honor to have such a leadership position for such an amazing team. A great summary can be found here: The Blue Alliance
Week 34
4/25/17
Today the people that went to Houston gave a talk. We had a few pictures showcasing the big stuff and each of us would talk about what the picture meant to us and any stories we could tell about it. We took up the entire period which makes sense, there was a hell of a lot to talk about after a journey like that.
4/26/17
Today the Gordons came in right at the end of lunch for us to unpack. We just shoved everything into a pile and will sort it all out later. It went decently quick and faster than I expected. It was really nice to have Athanatos back at home. After the Gordons left we had some fun just driving Athanatos around and Climbing him a few times.
4/27/17
Today Kevin and I worked on printing some discs for the climber to prevent the rope from slipping off the drum onto the axel. While those were printing we also worked on the tool path for the CNC so that we can CNC circles out of polycarbonate soon. The 3D prints are temporary fixes and I'm not sure how well theyre going to hold up to repeated use so that's why we're goign to CNC some out of 1/4" polycarbonate.
4/28/17
Today Kevin and I spent the period putting the 3D printed discs onto the climber and they work really well! We dont think we'll actually need to CNC polycarbonate ones. It's really nice when your temporary fix works better than expected.
Week 35
5/1/17
Today a group of us started work on a crate that we could use to store the shelves we use in a box that doesnt fall apart. We're just going to use scrap wood to put it together, it doesnt have to be pretty. Today we just did planning and cut out the bottom piece on the table saw.
5/2/17
Today Cole and I did more work on the box and got it mostly done. due to limited resources and limited time we're just kind of throwing it together. We cut out all of the sides and attached them with 2x4's in the corners. It is pretty solid but the top flexes a bit so tomorrow we are going to attatch some blocks so that the tops of the sides are held together at the corners.
5/3/17
Today I wasnt in class because I was taking an AP test. I heard there was a paper airplane wednesday challenge, that's about the extent of my knowledge of the challenge. For my limited preparation I feel pretty good about my test so that's pretty good. After schoo Mr. Miller held a new thing called welding wednesdays. I went and finished the box, I didnt do any welding because I had to go home and study.
5/4/17
Today I finally started on designing my skateboard. I've been really busy and I'm pretty far behind on the whole skateboard thing but I think I'll be able to catch up and if I have enough time I have plans to make this skateboard electric. I've been doing a lot of research and there's a lot of options out there so first I just want to finish the skateboard itself and then I'll work on the electric conversion after that.
5/5/17
Yesterday after school I finihed my design and printed it out. Today I made a few revisions to make it better and printed it our again and then cut out the new one in school. I got inspiration from looking at other designs online and then made one very similar then I changed it to be the size I wanted and to change the style. I then printed it out during class and cut it out after school.
Week 36
5/8/17
Today I cut out strips a of carboard and glued them together. Cutting cardboard was nice, I cut three long grain pieces and one short grain piece. After I was done I saw mow much glue other people were using so I dont know if I used enough. We'll find out tomorrow when I take the bricks off and see how well it stays together.
5/9/17
Today I cut out my cardboard. I started off by tracing the paper design onto the cardboard.(side note, the cardboard seems to be well glued together so I guess I'm okay) After that I got in line to use the jigsaw to cut it out. I have a lot of experience with the jigsaw so I helped some people out. Not only did they get my help but they went quicker so I could cut mine out quicker. It was a win-win situation for everyone involved. Cutting it out went pretty well but the high vibration sometimes made the clamps fall off which only caused more trouble but I eventually got there and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
You may notice that my paper cutout has handles in it but not my cardboard prototype. After thinking and talking with some others I decided that the benifit of the holes arent worth the loss of structural stability.
5/10/17
Today I took the AP macroeconomics AP test so I wasn't in engineering today. I think they just worked on the skateboards because I didnt hear anything about a wednesday challenge.
5/11/17
Today I spent some of my time helping some of the veterans get their wood clamped but I also drilled the holes in my carboard for trucks. I used a piece of metal and put the jigs up agianst it to ensure the trucks would be parallel and then measured from oth sides of the cutout at each end to find the middle and aligned each truck to the middle at each end. I then drilled the holes but I didn't have time to put on some rental trucks to see how good my drilling is
5/12/17
Today I borrowed some of Dr. Neat's trucks and put them on my carboard skateboard to do the straight line test. At first the trucks were a bit loose and so my first results were all over the place but ten I got them tight and straight and my later results were really good. After 10 runs down the hallway my average drift, even with the erratic beginning, was 4.6ish inches. Dr. Neat was pleased with that so after school I took the time to glue up and clamp my wood together. I'm nervous, I put more glue than I did with the carboardand took a lot more time but I'm still nervous in case something bad happened over the weekend.
Week 37
5/15/17
Today I finally cut out my board. I started by tracing my paper onto my wood and then went from there. It went pretty well, I gave myself a litte bit too much cushion so my sanding is going to take a while. I'm really happy with how it turned out. Now it's just going to take like 3 and a half years to sand. After school I found Dr. Neat's power sander and sanded it down and got the final shape with 60 grit sandpaper. Tomorrow I'll drill the holes for the trucks and sand it down with highteer grit sandpaper. The design changed a bit in sanding. I just wanted it to look good and in wood the design looks different so it's dynamic and changed a bit from my origional CAD.
On the left is my initial rough cut and on the right is my sanded board. There's not much of a difference in look but it feels very different.
5/16/17
Today I started off by gettting the spacers and aligning them to drill the holes. I used the same process I used on my cardboard version to get them parallel and straight. After that I sanded my board with 100 grit sandpaper. The fire alarm also went off in the middle of class so I lost some work time but in the end I'm still pretty happy with my progess and board so far. I'm getting really excited now.
5/17/17
Today I had a rehersal for senior awards night during the first part of fifth. We learned decently obvious stuff and nothing that was particularly helpful. Though it only took up half the period so I came back into class and something weird was hapenning. I think it was a wednesday challenge. Everyone had a sheet with a structure on it and on the field there were some plastic pipes and connetors. The class was in pairs and one would direct the other while the builder was blindfolded. Some of us in robotics worked on a CAD for a grft for Mrs. Martos and at one point kevin and I were called out, we did our thing for the wedensday challenge and then went back to working on the CAD. During sixth I finishedthe CAD and we wiill build it tomorrow
5/18/17
Today is the day of robotics banquet so Cole and I worked on making Mrs. Martos her sign. It wasnt the most precise we've ever been, but for the speed with which we got it done with I'm impressed with how accurate we were.
5/19/17
Today I was "sick" as were all the other seniors... an odd phenomenon. I tried some unorthooxmethods of feelingbetter such as going out to breakfast, going minigolfoing, and going to the beach. I do feel much better now
Week 38
5/22/17
Today I finished sanding with 150 grit and started a bit of 220 grit. I also decided that I do want to do a design so I started to think about that a little bit.
5/23/17
Today I finished 220 and laid out panters tape a few diferent ways to see how the diferent designs would look. At the end of the day I got a pretty cool design.
5/24/17
Today I did one final revision of my tape design and I'm really happy about it. I then painted my board and it came out FREAKING AMAZING! I'm so happy with my final design, it's simple bu really cool.
My top
My bottom
5/25/17
Today I did my first coat of laquer on the bottom. Kirk helped me a lot through this since I wasnt entirely sure what I was doing. I taped up the to edge of my board which was a challenge with some of the tight curves and then starte laquering. It looks even better now!
5/26/17
Today I did my second coat of laquer on the bottom of my board. I first sanded the first coat with 150 grit sandpaperto roughen up the surface so this layer will stick better. I then applied the laquer with the paint brush like yesterday and I'm really happy wth how good its coming out and looking.
If anything seems familar to you, I refer you to this video Tom Lehrer, Lobachevsky