FIRST Robotics Competition Team 238
2018 Build Season Week 4 Newsletter
As Week 4 closes, the team is starting to overcome the Week 4 slump - a time when everyone is tired, the work continues but feels like it’s in slow-motion. Progress has been made by each of the subteams in the robot build and marketing activities.
The CAD team has been focusing on ensuring the proper manufacturing and assembly of parts for the robot elevator and drivetrain. With a plethora of parts, we are looking to make instructions so that these mechanisms are quicker to assemble. We have also been working on conceptual designs for climbing, which is essential for accumulating ranking points in competition.
The Mechanical team has received our powder coated parts back from our sponsor Rapid Manufacturing and have begun assembling the elevator system. The intake has begun the machining process.
This week the Electrical team continued to work on both of our robots finishing more of the wiring on our competition robot. We are waiting for our elevator to be completed and mounted on both robots so we can get closer to completion. We’ve mostly been tidying up our wires and connections.
The Software team created programming objects and commands this week for the robot. We also designed the autonomous system (where the robot operates without human control) and motion profiling our practice drivetrain.
The Chairman’s team has finalized all the information we want into the essay for this award and nearly completed our executive summaries. The only thing left now is for the essay to go through the final review and revision stage and submit before our deadline this week.
The Marketing team met this week to discuss banner standards and competition “avatars”. For our banner project, we are looking to design a standard background for large display materials that match our branding identity. We are looking to utilize a simplistic, yellow and black theme that resembles existing document standards. As this year’s game theme is retro-gaming, FIRST has introduced team “avatars” to represent our team in match play. Our avatar is an 8-bit version of our logo and has been submitted to FIRST for use in our competitions. Visit our team page to check it out: https://frc-events.firstinspires.org/2018/team/238
Sponsor Spotlight
Millennium Precision has supported the team with funding and materials for the past several seasons. As a Crown Sponsor, they have supplied the majority of the metal that is used to build our robot each year. In the past, the team has had the opportunity to present to the team at Millennium and hold demonstrations of our robots. Millennium Precision is a manufacturer of precision Swiss style machined components. Their process of manufacturing turns a bar or blank of material into high quality and durable products that span multiple markets. Thank you Millennium Precision!
