FIRST Robotics Report 3.2 - A Good Run

The usual pattern during build season is one good session alternating with a less good one.  In this critical week three can we string together a batch of good ones?

Monday was good.  Smaller crew on hand again, it was an "in service day" so no school and the kids had to make a special trip in.  But we continue to make critical frame elements, to adapt designs as necessary, and the team came up with a very clever solution to getting the "game ball" to fly those few extra inches it needs to go....it involves a small pneumatic cylinder "kicking" it when it is lined up.  Roughly 6 pounds of force delivered briskly and pushing the ball 3 inches straight forward should suffice.

Software did have an off night.  Something "crashed" and took a bunch of data down with it.

Starting to ponder one of the bigger decisions of mid build....when do you move the mechanisms onto the competition frame?  It is necessary but takes the robot out of the hands of the programmers for several sessions.  And from that point onward you must share.

Tuesday.  Well, lets do this one in pictures.

It is starting to show what it will look like in final form.  Here the front of the "elevator" is being roughed in.  That older gent in the picture is one of the two Grandpas volunteering to help the team.  He's working shoulder to shoulder with his grandson.

3D printers can be useful.  Need a spool for your winch?  Design and print.

Up til now the robots have been living in a display case.  It has been a tight fit.  Tuesday we got the OK to park them in a seldom used conference room between build sessions.  That is the software test robot on the right, the competition drive base in the middle, and the "skeleton" frame with mechanisms in the back.

Oh and regards weight.  Given the gravity of the question I was not willing to accept the happy number that our scale gave us a few days before.  I brought in a second scale, as it happens the seldom used one from our bathroom.  Piling up known weights (robot batteries at 12 pounds each) we compared the two scales.  There was a difference....with the bathroom scale weighing light.

I told the kids that it was my job to teach them about the ways of the world.  One such harsh reality is that any maker of bathroom scales that ever, EVER, had one weigh heavy would be out of business in short order.  So we believe the heavier, but still on track for our goal number.

Naturally we'll check again as final decisions are made.

Thursday.  Well all streaks end and this was an off night.  When we went to assemble the combined elevator/intake system we discovered that some things did not fit.  Sigh.  Another redesign of the intake and another (partial) dismantle of the elevator.  

At competition I'm sure the judges will ask about all those extra holes.  I guess there are a few possible answers.  Ummmm....we had to trim weight?  Or the better and truer one.  We had things to learn.