by The Hitchhikers | Feb 27, 2016 | Build season
This last week of build season, our team continued to fabricate parts for the chassis. Fortunately, it only took us a few days to make all the pieces and we were able to start assembling everything together. While we were putting everything together on for the second chassis, we started taking apart our first chassis so we could start painting it. We got the parts painted and were then able to quickly put them back together at the end of the week.
One we assembled everything together again, we took our robot, Ford, out for testing. We practiced crossing a couple of defenses and shooting the boulder into the high goal. Once we were able to figure out a few values for aiming, we took Ford back to our shop and started to take him apart and get ready for bag & tag.
by The Hitchhikers | Feb 27, 2016 | Build season
This week, our team accomplished a lot to get the robot driving and the arm to aim for the high goal. We we were also able to get our shooter rollers working. Towards the end of the week, we started to work on building a second robot chassis to give ourselves something to practice with for the weeks in between bag and tag day and our first competition.
While our build team was working on finishing building the robot, our marketing team was working on putting the final touches to the t-shirt design.
Towards the end of the week, despite our busy schedule, we were still able to make it to Apex Elementary annual “Science Spectacular” event. Presenting to each grade level throughout the day, we were able to introduce hundreds of students to FIRST and the importance of STEM.
by The Hitchhikers | Feb 13, 2016 | Build season
This past week, we continued to cut pieces for the chassis and assembled them. Along the way, we encountered a few problems such as cutting parts the wrong size and not making certain parts completely identical. This set us back a bit, but we were able to get everything cut correctly and assembled a little while later. While the chassis was getting built, our programming team was able to get the electronics wired and working. Additionally, they were able to program the basic robot functions: driving, shooting, and lifting.
With our business group, we finished writing both the Chairman’s and Woodie Flowers essay submissions and successfully submitted both by the deadline. We also continued to design our t-shirts and buttons.
While we had a few setbacks this week, we were still able to make a lot of progress on with our robot. Through our mistakes, members have been able to learn several valuable lessons, including, “Measure twice, cut once!”
With our business group, we finished writing both the Chairman’s and Woodie Flowers essay submissions and successfully submitted both by the deadline. We also continued to design our t-shirts and buttons.
While we had a few setbacks this week, we were still able to make a lot of progress on with our robot. Through our mistakes, members have been able to learn several valuable lessons, including, “Measure twice, cut once!”
by The Hitchhikers | Feb 11, 2016 | Build season
On the third week of build season, we started to work on finishing the shooter frame and cut pieces for the robot chassis. At the beginning of the week, our team had a more finalized design of the robot and started to work on building the chassis and fabricating different parts. We tweaked the shooter a little bit from the previous design we had to provide more movement for the joints. One of the more common points of the week was to have people crowding around a computer screen looking at the robot model in CAD (Computer-Aided Design). Starting to build the chassis was fun and it presented many tasks that could be done at once, which gave every member an opportunity to be even more involved with the production of the robot.
On the business side of things, we progressed forward with the writing of the Chairman’s and Woodie Flowers award submissions. We also voted upon a t-shirt design and started to draw it in illustrator.
by The Hitchhikers | Feb 4, 2016 | Build season
This second week of build season, we continued to improve our shooter and started figuring out the different angles for shooting. We also continued designing our robot in CAD and figuring out the dimensions and angles for the different parts and fitting them all together. Towards the end of the week, we had many parts in the process of being built.
Apart from the robot side of things, our team also started working on the marketing and business-related items, such as writing the Chairman’s essay and drawing t-shirt designs.
At the end of the week, our progress was delayed for about three days when a small ice storm hit the area. While we couldn’t work on the robot over that time, we were still able to work a lot on our t-shirt designs and essays. Overall, we were able to get a lot done this week despite a couple of challenges.
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