Friday, September 26, 2014

Reforming Teams

We are now going to switch sides and make new teams. Some of the VEX teams are switching over to Tetrix to begin working on the FTC Cascade Effect game. With the new rules and field bill of materials coming out, we are going to change gears and put our focus towards this. Our goals for this week are to determine how many groups we will have and those groups will be focused on.
R I P   G A S P A C H O

Monday, September 22, 2014

Week 5

For this week we have put the finishing touches on our robot and competed in the final competition. unfortunately we didn't do as well as we had hoped to.  We found that our robot was losing traction very easily. Lack of support on our axles caused them to flex which in turn caused the gears to not properly mesh together restricting our robot from performing at max capacity.

Friday, September 19, 2014

Game Day

Today is Friday! We were supposed to have our Tug-O'-War elimination bracket tournament, but our teacher is not here today and the tournament has to be postponed. So instead, we are all trying to practice with other teams and perfecting our robots for when we do have the tournament. The next
challenge for next week is still unknown, so all we can do is prep for next week's tournament.

Monday, September 15, 2014

It's the Final Countdown

Its the beginning to the end. This is the final few days we have before it is time to pit our bot against all the others. This week we need to hunker down and really tie up any loose ends, or in our case, tighten down any loose bolts. The motors are spinning today and our robot can move, but can it win?

Friday, September 12, 2014

Wrapping Up Our Returning Week

This week was not as constructive as we had hoped. With the robot still not complete, we do not have a lot of time to finish before the next competition rolls around. We will try to focus all of our efforts next week on completing the new drive-train and programming the brain. It should be simple enough, but with our luck, who knows how it will turn out.

Monday, September 8, 2014

We're Back in Business!

So after we all spent this past weekend relaxing and catching up on some much needed sleep, we put our heads together to come up with a better robot design that will surely knock out any robot that stands in our way. Our team is back together and no one is MIA any longer. To make sure things get done, we have even taken the extra step to assign jobs and positions for everyone to take care of before the end of the week. Our team is really showing promise and we hope that all goes well for the next elimination bracket.

Friday, September 5, 2014

That's All Folks

After the gears settled, our robot was not very victorious. The Tug-O'-War Challenge Elimination Bracket was yesterday and the competition was tough, we beat out most of our competitors, but suffered a defeat near the end when our rigged spacer failed to keep our driving gear in place. Today marks the end of an era and next week will open a new chapter in our team's book.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Back to the Grind

After returning from a three day weekend we are left with only a couple of days before we must start the elimination bracket. Our robot is not in the best of shape and we are slightly behind our planned schedule. With this limit on collars we have been forced to come up with rather creative ways to keep our gears in place and not shift around while the robot is in use, or even stationary. Hopefully we can get our things together and come out on top.

Friday, August 29, 2014

Shape Up or Ship Out

It's the end of week one and our robot is looking good. Our drive train has been finished and we are pretty happy with the results. Looking at our competition, we feel pretty confident in what we've accomplished and are almost certain to beat out the rest. Starting next week, we will be in place to program our robot and see just how well our idea works and make any tweaks or modifications before game day.

Monday, August 25, 2014

Starting Off

Today was the first day of building robots this year in engineering. Our groups are chosen and we are developing the design of our robot. Getting parts was an all out war and we will have to make due with what we got. This week we aim to have our robot done and ready for programming on Tuesday. With no school on Monday, and the elimination bracket starting Thursday morning, we have to meet a tight deadline to get our robot ready. Now we start the process of taking inventory.