Team 237 2009 Current Events

---

Week One - Day 5 01/09/09  TGIF   The first week is always rough.  We are still bickering on how to do things, but we are not going to let it bother us.
It is so much fun watching the student put together the electronics.  We made no magic smoke and no one soldered their fingers together.  I miss the smell of solder and burning flesh.



We purchased one sheet of the FRP flooring material at Home Depot.  $35.00 per sheet.  I thing we'll need three more.  We threw together the kit bot (Thanks Andy) and tested how slippery a loaded robot was.  It is lucky that we have twins that weigh just the right amount to simulate the robot loaded.  Don't worry, we have a spare if this one gets hurt.  The robot slides quite a bit on the FRP.  Wheel spin will kill us.



We constructed a trailer goal.  Interesting design.  It seems easy to toss balls into it.   We will build a second one for testing purposes.

---

Week One - Day 4 01/08/09 Yea.  We are back in the school.  The Andymark drive train showed up.  This is our first chance to look at the wheels.  Very sweet.  It appears Nypro is providing the materials for them.   We began assembling them onto the new kitbot.  



I purchased a 4 x 8 sheet of FRP($35.00) to test them on.  Very slick.



It is a Team 237 tradition to change our minds.  We are going to build a traditional 4 wheel base to allow the electrical team time to work with the new electronics.  We will also build the crab base ;) and hopefully we will be able to use it.





We prototyped a roller assembly for shooting the Orbit balls out of the hopper.  A piece of PVC with cord worked well.



Using the 07' bot we started working on how the trailer would mate with the robot.  We got quite a bit done.  

---

Week One - Day 3 01/07/09 No school today.  We were able to meet at one of our sponsors offices.  Sweet.  Thanks to KeyPro Realtors for the space.   We actually got quite a bit decided.  Crab drive in the front and fixed wheels in the back.  We also decided on a dump bin for the balls that will be feed from the human player station.

---

Week One - Day 2 01/06/09 No meeting.  There is a storm coming so the town canceled all evening activities.  We tried to get an alternate location, but it did not work out.  The storm is supposed to last through Wednesday, so we may miss tomorrow also.

---

Week One - Day 1 01/05/09  We have our first real meeting of the sixweeks.  We warned the students that they need to read the manual because there would be a test.  Guess what?  There was a test.   Not a hard test, but you needed to read the manual.  How many passed?  50%.   The students took it until they passed.  Here is my problem.  I expect the students to take this seriously.  The mentors all give up their time to do this.  I expect that they will not waste our time.

What did we accomplish?  Actually quite a bit.  We talked it out enough so we are all on the same page with how the game may work.  We are all, for the most part, understanding each other when we talk.  Too often, there are multiple definitions that slow down the discussions.   Did I expect more?  Always.  Am I OK with how far we got.  You Betcha ya. <wink>