Category Archives: Build Season 2013

Week 1 Updates (Days 1-7)

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We have 39 days to go as of the time I wrote this sentence. So far this week we have accomplished some critical things in the design process (Strategy, Conceptualization, and Prototyping). I will try to push out an update every Saturday night or Sunday for the coming weeks. Follow us on Twitter for the latest information.

Saturday

See this blog post about kickoff day!

Monday

We started prototyping the shooter along with the climbing mechanisms and a defense strategy. The climbing mechanisms we were talking about consisted of a rocker bogie, much like the back set of wheels on the Mars rovers and shimming our way up the outside. We ruled out that idea, and are going with a much more simplistic idea that is going to be pretty cool.

Wednesday

We took Tuesday off to let the Ames students study for finals. We continued on Wednesday by talking about drive trains and listing the pros and cons for each of the three we were looking at, that consisted of tank, [REDACTED], and [REDACTED]. When we finally picked the one that we are going with. During our business meeting, an Ames promotions guy came to talk to us about making “trinkets” and tattoos. We decided to not get the trinkets because they were too expensive, but we got 2,000 tattoos with the FIRST logo on them to be able to hand out at events. We also continued the work on prototyping the climbing mechanisms along with our defense mechanism and making a test practice board for the electronics team to get started. Some students also worked on the frisbee shooter as well.

Thursday

The team worked more on prototyping the shooter. The prototype chasis was printed for us with some frisbees as well. We also talked about applying for awards as well today.

Friday

We continued thinking about climbing strategies and managed to come up with 3 new ones, eventually coming to a consensus that Aren finally had bolted his head back on to come up with a brand new strategy where we wouldn’t be relying on our center of gravity (CG) to push us back into the pyramid. It was also way simpler then all of our over thought ideas.

Day 1: Ultimate Ascent is Here!

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We watched the kickoff in awe and was shocked when it was done… 10:20am read the time! One thing I thought was pretty cool was when Woodie mentioned the Gracious Professionalism shown by our friends, #525 SwartDogs in Cedar Falls, last year at the Kansas City Regionals which you can read about here. I would like to set a challenge for all teams to help teams in need this year, just like SwartDogs did.

This year’s theme is Ultimate Ascent. It looks super interesting and kinda challenging. We noticed that this year’s challenge and last year’s challenge are very similar in a number of ways.

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After kick-off, we worked on devising a successful strategy. After lunch, we came back and played beta tested the throwing of frisbees and how they fly. Our mentor, Aren, had the most successful attempts at throwing a frisbee “through” a “goal” (in our case, we used live Neutrinos as goal post markers). Once we got done with that, we talked and finalized our strategy and started talking about our goals for our robot this season.

Before you finish reading, we would like to thank our wonderful sponsors this year: Quality Manufacturing, our AMAZING fabricator and who has graciously picked up fabrication for Team #4646; Sauer Danfoss, one of our largest contributors this year; CIT Signature Transportation, who will transport us to and from two regionals this year; John Deere, who allowed us to go to a second regional this year and lends us one of their awesome engineers; Iowa State University Extension and Outreach – Story County 4-H, who graciously has given space for us to use along with liability insurance for everyone; Story County 4-H Foundation, who has given us a $1,000 grant; along with JCPenney and Chase Signs & Graphics.

Also a BIG shout out to the ISU College of Engineering and the ISU Robotics Club for granting us space on campus along with a nice shop to work in.

BTW, kudos to the team of guys working in Florida on their robot to have it all fabricated and ready to run on Monday! WOW! Check out their progress here.

Can’t wait to show off our robot when we get it complete in 6 weeks! GO TEAMS!
-David