Golden Horn

A full day of robotics for some of the team members. They had a PMMC meeting, then robotics after school. After school, we worked on tricking out the gatherer, making a new horn, working on the mascot's feet, and the pulleys for the gatherer.

The PMMC meeting went great. The PMMC is a group of Alexandria packing and manufacturing companies in the area. They are a major sponsor for the team (check out the sponsors tab at the top of the blog) and meet once a month. The team has presented at meetings before but were much more prepared this time. Each of the sub-team captains (Brandon, Jenna, Megan, and Bryce) presented for a few minutes on what the team has been up to for the past two months. They did a great job and the PMMC was very impressed. After the meeting, the four students and Bydlon walked around junior/senior lunch with the mascot. The confused and very interested looks from students were pretty awesome. It's things like that which help push the popularity and awareness of the team.

After school, the big things for the build team were working on the conveyer and the horn. Bydlon, Bryce, and Jordan put LED lights into the conveyer supports. They are going to look great once they are all wired in tomorrow. Ryan worked his butt off putting the v belt pulleys onto a metal rod. We are going to use these instead of the wooden dowels that we used on the prototype. These will be more efficient and less noisy. Hopefully, the rods and pulleys will be put on the bot tomorrow. We still need to buy 6 more of them. The last build project was completely remaking the horn for lowering the bridge. The two main reason for this was that we wanted to be able to retract the horn throughout the match and we didn't know how to program the servo. Our spring loaded system that we made before did not have that ability. It's kind of incredible that we went from a totally new idea to completely done within one day. We will program it in tomorrow.

PR/Advertising worked on getting the t-shirts all ordered. We have received all of the money for shirts and jerseys so Jenna went and ordered them today. They should be done by this weekend.

Demian finished making the new wheel wells for the robot cart. 

Jesse, Steph, and Kacy worked on the mascot's feet today. The base for them is all made. The rest of it just detailing.

Megan and Gabe programmed in the autonomous mode. The autonomous (programmed robot driving only at the beginning of the game) is really easy this year. All we have to do is turn on the conveyer and shooter and that's it.We still need to test it.

Tomorrow will be another big day for the team. The big goal is to get the conveyer completely working again. Also wiring up more LEDs and programming the horn should be done. Great work by the team! These are the days which make robotics so awesome to be a part of!!