Build Day 13: Busy Day not just with the obot

Our build session started off with a presentation by the founders of BlueStampEngineering.com. They are bringing a summer engineering program to Houston and we thought it would be good for our members to hear about it and also speak with a couple of professional engineers. This also gave us a chance to show off our projects as they walked around observing after the presentation.

One of our main goals for today was to finish editing our rookie guide: Spectrum Illuminations 2012. It should hopefully answer a lot of the questions that we received during the Rookie Build Day last weekend. Thank you to everyone that helped develop it; it looks great.

The robot continued to progress as well. We outfitted the shooter prototype with two of the 0673 FisherPrice motors, this gives us about twice the power of one CIM, we should be able to change the gear ratio to get us a higher RPM and a longer range.

The collector is progressing along, we were able to seat the bearing and w're working on mounting the conveyor tread to the initial roller. Once we finish, we'll make 2 more and be ready to go for assembly. 
Here are pictures of the initial roller.

Our programming team is still going through some bugs in WPILIB. Getting sensor drivers working is becoming a challenge, but that's part of trying something new. If we get everything working it will all be worth the effort.

This weekend we should be able to have the drive train and collector assembly nearly finished. We still need to play around with the shooter design until we settle on something that works the best.

Overall a pretty good day of build, but this weekend's progress may determine our season.

- Allen Gregory

"Sometimes the problem has to mature before the solution can mature." - Kent Beck