I was in such a rush to be on vacation, I didn't have time to tell you about the robotics build season. By the time we bagged the robot it was working fairly well, but it was a bit of a rocky start and nerve-wracking finish. The mechanical design and build team took a little bit longer than usual to get everything going, so we wired most of the robot in about two days. And then we had one or two days to refine the program. The last evening we had maybe one hour to practice, and then into the bag it went. Overall I think it will give us pretty good results, but the proof will be in the competitions.
Our prototype shooter was shooting beautifully, and for the first couple days of shooting on the real robot it was looking good. But then it lost its mojo. We struggled for at least two days trying to get it back. And finally on the day we had to bag it, we discovered the key to getting the mojo back was some good old WD-40 to prevent binding in the launch mechanism.
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| Prototype shooter |
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| Prototype "bling with a purpose". Our final solution is much different, but this was one concept we tried. |
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| A peek at some of the wiring. |
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| Robot nearly complete - some pneumatic hoses were missing, so we used last year's robot to fire the ball. |
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| Nearly complete - ready to be bagged. |
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| Bagged with about ten minutes to spare before the deadline. |
Cocking the shooting mechanism:
Shooting the ball!
We go to our first competition in a little bit over a week......good times!
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