Team 237 2008 Build Season Week 2

01/18/08 Working at the school again.  Last nights storm was a bust.  We should of been at school.  Metal is getting cut at a good pace now.  We are producing cad prints at a good rate now.   If everything goes well, we will have a rolling base mid-week.  That's late, but we've been later.


I am very impressed with my freshman students.   They are doing everything we ask them to do.  It is tough being a freshman in this program.  You can't work in the metals shop, you won't get on the drive team, but there is lots of jobs for you.   It's time to check their grades.  Mid-terms are going on.   We get lots done since we can't meet on Monday.  It's a holiday.

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01/17/08 OH No!!! They are predicting a storm for tonight so to be safe they canceled all after school activities again.   We have to scramble to get a meeting place.  We use the community room at the bank.   Nice place.  Too bad they don't have any machine tools.


We do have CAD and a bunch of drawings.  The drawings are checked and the parts are assigned to the students to be made, hopefully tomorrow at the school.  If not we will need to find an off site machine shop to use.

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01/16/08 Lots of activity tonight.  Everyone has something to do.  The electronics team is wiring the demo board.   The mechanical team is cutting metal and reworking the transmissions.  When we put them together, we did not like the fit.  We reworked the assembly and they work great.

My mentors just don't say do it this way, they take the time to give the students a solid understanding of how and why things work.  The students are like sponges.  They take it all in and begin to apply it. 

I am humbled by the effort the engineering mentors give to the team.  My engineers don't have kids that have been on the team.  They heard about the program and enjoy sharing their skills and knowledge with the students.  It take someone very special to totally disrupt their lives to work every night for six weeks and some weekends with the students.  This program could not run without them.  They are my heroes.

Excellent chicken cutlets for dinner.

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01/15/08 We had a full meeting tonight.  lots got done.  Ball handling mechanisms were prototyped.  The picture shows one such device.  Will this be the final design.   Who knows it's only the second week of build.

The picture illustrates an important point about Team 237. This is the students project.  They are involved in every detail of the the design and fabrication.  My engineering mentors are their to show the students how to do what we have decided as a group to do.  For some of these students, this is the first time that they have had ownership in a project like this.  One of the hardest things for new members, both students and mentors, is to understand the we sink or swim as a group.  The group is what this is all about.  We are only as strong as the group. 

The magic in this program comes from the six weeks.  What happens in that short amount of time stays with these students for a lifetime.  We have an impossibly hard challenge, and an impossibly short amount of time to complete it in.  When we are done, the students have all redefined impossible.  There is no more impossible, there is hard work and reward.   

Great cold cut sandwiches for dinner.

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01/14/08 The first day of Week 2 and it snows.  We traditionally will miss two or three days to snow during build.  It's a disadvantage to the teams in the snow belt, but we take it in stride.  We'll whine about it, but we can't change it.


We are fortunate to be able to meet in various offsite locations.  The group is smaller and more focused on these days.  This meeting was just for the mechanical team.  The basic design of the ball manipulator is finalized.   The plan is to be cutting metal tomorrow. 

Ziti for dinner.  Yumm

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