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2019 FRC 238 Bits and Bytes:
Build Season Week 2
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Overall, week two of build season has been productive. Between our CAD team creating robot pieces and the technical team prototyping mechanisms to solve the game’s puzzles, progress has been made by all members. We are now one week closer to a successful and working robot.
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CAD
The CAD team is working on an elevator to move both cargo and panels. We are also researching how to intake game pieces and how to climb. The drive train is also being worked on, and is almost finalized.
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Prototyping
When using a new mechanism or revisiting an old one, we construct a test model. The purpose of prototyping is to answer a question or hypothesis proposed to further develop the robot. With prototyping, mechanisms are tested so we know they’ll work if we manufacture them. We are prototyping the game piece manipulators.
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Velcro: Our new idea is to grab the panel at the top and bottom and use pneumatics to push the panel off of the velcro. Right now, the tests are inconsistent, but we are working those issues out and the tests are becoming more consistent.
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Vacuum: We have a prototype that we’ve been hard at work to make successful. We used a shop-vac and replaced the AC motor with a motor that is allowed for use. Seeing how our past tests went, we are hopeful that it will work as well as before we took out the AC motor.
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Field Elements
We are currently building some of game elements. Some elements include the rocketship and the HAB level. Upon building the HAB level, we will see how we need to create the robot to climb in order to maximize points. We also built the rocketship to simulate how we will score both points and ranking points during the match.
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Photography and Videography
This year, we decided to take pictures and videos around our shop to show what the students on the team are doing. We upload a video every week to our Youtube channel to show the public what we do at our shop.
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Chairman's Award
This week in the community division we have been writing our Chairman’s Award submission. This year, we decided to create our own deadlines so we know that we get the submission done in a good amount of time and at a nice pace. The deadline for our rough draft of the Chairman’s essay was 1/19/19 and the revised draft is due 1/26/19.
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Sponsor Spotlight
Rapid Manufacturing has been sponsoring the Crusaders since 2017. Rapid is a company based in Nashua, NH with separate sheet metal and CNC machining based around fast turnarounds on prototype and production parts. Their state of the art machining centers, laser cutters, and presses along with their custom built software such as their Solidworks add on that will give instant pricing on parts allows Rapid to get finished parts to customers with incredible speed. Rapid is part of the Proto Labs family of companies which is the largest short run manufacturing company in the world.
Rapid has supported the team for over two years with equipment and services to help us create robot parts. Their sheet metal division is powder coating all of our finished parts for the competition robot using their in house paint facility and powder coating oven. When we were in a bind getting the base plate for the competition robot cut out, the machining division stepped up and cut it on their waterjet for us the next day.
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February, 16th
Week Zero, Merrimack HS
March, 17th-18th
North Shore District Event
March, 30th-31st
UNH District Event
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February, 7th
Parent Group Meeting, 6:30 pm
February, 19th
Stop Build Day
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