This week, as we near the end of our build season, we had to commit to get our robot done in time and done well. We started the week with a friendly visit from two great teams: Quixilver and Goldstrikers. We discussed robot design with them, figuring out which methods worked for the other teams.
We also had a lot of improvements to make on our own robot. Our robot was a little overweight, so we needed to figure out how to add some weight reduction. We changed our plates to be thinner and gave the belly pan some grates. This resulted in a mad sprint to machine and assemble our robot, which means we now have three competition drive trains! An Alpha bot, Beta bot, and our final robot, named Vantage!
We began to remake the robot, with the overweight one being used for driver practice as the new one continues to get built. This helped our weight problem tremendously, and we should be underweight now.
Furthermore, we had a lot of subsystem changes. For our outtake, we shortened the bottom plate and then bent it so the coral would be deposited from the indexer more smoothly.
For the climb, we made it taller and added a hard stop while it is moving forward to ensure it doesn’t break. We also started making some spare parts, as we near the comp, just in case something goes wrong and we need a replacement part.
We also finalized about 600 pins to distribute at the competitions, each with a bit of the 972 flair! These will hopefully be traded with other teams at events. We’re also getting all of our team apparel shipped in time for trading at Pinnacles at the end of this week!
We are currently working on the tech binder, a binder that stores all the necessary information about our robot, and information to complete the awards that we are aiming for. This year we’re doing something a little different. We are going to have both a printed-out version to give to the judges, but also a Google Slides presentation to upload to our touch screen for Pit Scouters and judges to thumb through.
We finished a lot in these two weeks, and we can’t wait for our first comp at Pinnacles! See you there!
