Massman Automation Designs

Team 3313 Mechatronics went to Massman Automation Designs in Villard, MN today to do some presentations. We had two different presentation times, one in the morning and one in the evening.

Check out a video recap here.

In the morning, some of the team members met at the Robot Room when school started. We headed down to Massman to present to Minnewaska High School students that were touring. On Monday night, we brought down all the supplies so all we had to do on Tuesday was set them up. The presentation went ok. We did not know how much time we had to talk so that made the first presentation a little disjointed. We recovered for the second presentation however. The morning was a fun experience and Team 3313 welcomes the chance to excite other schools about STEM education and FIRST Robotics. It was a natural progression, talking about high school robotics and then all of the cool stuff Massman makes. The team members headed back to school for the afternoon.

After school was over, a bunch of team members headed back down to Massman for their Open House. Massman opened up its doors for the evening to community members, employee members, and our team. We had the same area set up. The team estimated that we presented to well over 200 people. It was a great experience. Just like the morning, the more presentations we did, the more comfortable we got and the better the experience was for everyone. The team members who came with did a great job of dividing up speaking responsibilities.

The highlight of the night though, was the tour of Massman Automation Designs. Basically, Massman manufactures assembly lines. The assembly lines they build often deal with food products being boxed up and packaged. We saw a line that takes ground turkey packages and boxes them. Then the machine puts the boxes on palates and shrink wraps the palates. It was awesome. Another machine takes 40 lb. blocks of cheese and puts them into packages. A microwave popcorn bag filler that was destined for the country of Hungary was also exciting. It can go up to 200 bags a minute!!! Woah! All the work, time, and care that goes into each machine was really impressive.

Massman is part of the PMMC, one of our major local sponsors. Obviously, we also appreciate the support Massman and the PMMC provide us. It was fun to finally get to see what they do and how it connects to our group. Can't wait to visit our other sponsors!!

Bagging Fun

The team spent all of today spreading the values of FIRST, raising money, talking about our team, and having fun (of course). We bagged groceries at Elden's Food Fair in Alexandria and worked at a Haunted Barn near Carlos, MN.

Make sure you check out the videos we made from this awesome day.
Bagging at Elden's
Haunted Barn Ad

The entire day was really fun. Obviously, the team sends a huge THANK YOU to Elden's for the opportunity to publicize our team and make some money. We lost count of all the people who gave us positive encouragement and donated to us. The Alexandria community is a fantastic collection of generous people and Team 3313 Mechatronics is really lucky to work in this area.

The Haunted Barn was fun too! Some of the team members dressed as monsters and scared people who walked through. Kacy especially was very creepy. Team 3313 is very happy to help out with the Haunted Barn. If you live in the Alexandria area, make sure you check it out at http://www.facebook.com/frightmarefarmhauntedbarn!

Many Hands For Lots Of Work

In all honesty, after presenting to the 9th graders yesterday, we expected to have maybe 2 or 3 show up today or in the future. It's a big time commitment and kind of scary to show up to a new thing. Boy, were we wrong. We had 6 show up!! WOAH! That's great! We needed all the help too. Soooo much going today.

The two main priorities for today for the Build Team were getting Murphy driving again and shooting a basketball. Both of these items were possible because we received our new parts from AndyMark (the main robot part distributor). With all of the people hanging out, the work went pretty fast and we got A TON accomplished. It was kind of incredible to watch actually.

The work started with Brandon and Tyler tackling the gearboxes for the drive train. Let's be honest, gearboxes are not the most fun thing to deal with. They require a lot of precision, the parts are really small and have to be put together in a very specific order. However, Brandon and Tyler got them put together and mounted on the robot in a pretty short amount of time. Unfortunately, we had a bunch of other stuff we were working on so we couldn't test the drive train right away.

The other big goal of the Build Team was to shoot a basketball. We wanted to switch out a CIM motor on the shooter for some smaller motors so we could use that CIM in our drive train. Luckily, mounting the new small motors was not that much of a problem. First, Bryce marked the new mounting holes on the wheel mount. Molly brought it over to Alex Tech and got them machined out. Then Bryce mounted the gear box and put it on the robot.

Another thing we are working on for Build Team was mounting the pneumatics components. Pneumatics is using air pressure to move pistons. Demian and David worked on mounting the compressor. It was a process because we had to get mounts made, then putting the mounts on and everything was a paint in the butt. Lots of putting things together and then taking them apart. But that's ok! It looks great and is extremely stable.

Programming team spent a lot of time today just kind of waiting for those upgrades to get finished. Once Murphy was up and driving, there was some time spent debugging and working on different small projects. Like getting the SMART Dashboard up and running and working on the semi-autonomous.

Carson spent pretty much all of today working on a poster for the Massman Open House. One of our awesome sponsors, Massman, is a packaging machine manufacturer. They are opening up their shop to the public on October 23 and we will be a part of it. We will have our robots out and showing them off both to Massman employees and the public.

Kacy had driver's training so she showed up late but still got a lot done. She emailed out our Elden's Grocery Bagging Poster. She also started an email for our Kick-Off workshops. This is a brand new experience for the team so we want the organization to go well at the beginning.

Jesse and some of the other team members made some fixes to the mascot. After all of our public appearances recently, Mechatron was a little worse for wear. Jesse and the others also started coming up with some ideas for how to remake the legs of Mechatron.

Taylor worked on cleaning up more of the Robot Room. With all the activities we have been up to, it got a little messy. That is definitely a goal to have for the year: keep the Robot Room clean and organized more.

Gabe showed up a little bit later. He partnered up with Jesse and started talking and working on some more Chairman's Award activities. They discussed a general layout for the video and some ideas about how to start shooting. They also watched some more examples on YouTube.

After getting everything put together, we tested out driving Murphy and shooting basketballs. It all worked!!! Yay! It was really fun to see Murphy moving around and picking up basketballs again. So proud of all the work and upgrades we have done so far.

There was crazy energy today because of all the newbies and pretty much everyone being in attendance. It was AWESOME!

After working so hard, some of the team members used a 12 sided die to decide where to eat dinner. THen played Rock Band for a while. What a great day.

We Want YOU To Be On Our Team

FIRST Robotics Team 3313 Mechatronics did some major recruiting today! We visited 3 different classes of 9th graders at Discovery Middle School. It was incredibly fun to share our work and talk about FIRST Robotics and STEM. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be a 3313 event without some problems.

Our first presentation was for Mrs. Kalina's Principles of Engineering class. We brought the robot in and was all set to go. Except a gear box had come apart during transit.... Ugh. So Bryce and Brandon started working on it while we did the power point presentation. It was Robotics In Action! Or something like that... The presentation still went really well. The students were interested throughout. We ended up gettting 14 names and email addresses! That's great!

The next presentation was in Mr. Holmen's PLTW class. This class does a lot of CAD work. We were going to drive Rover around during passing time and get some good video for Chairman's award. As usual, Murphy's Law happened. Yet another gear box came apart. Bryce and Brandon got to work fixing it while the rest of the group (Gabe, Allen, Molly, Kacy, and Bydlon) did the presentation. Again, the students were really interested and it went well. Bryce and Brandon are awesome and got the gear box working. However, a cable was broken so Rover had a limp (one motor didn't work). We made due the best we could and still had fun.

We have a meeting tomorrow after school. It will be really fun because we received a bunch of our Murphy upgrade parts. Can't wait to start shooting basketballs again!!

Nothing Can Ever Be Easy...

Today was the homecoming parade, the event we had prepared for all week. The weather was beautiful (maybe a little cold), the float was ready, the team was enthusiastic. Check out this YouTube link for video. More photos are on our facebook. Everything was shaping up for a great parade. Then Murphy's Law struck...

For those who don't know, Murphy's Law says that anything that can go wrong, will. For whatever reason, our team has things go wrong at the last minute all the time. No matter how much we prepare, how much we plan, how hard we work, something always go wrong. Today that problem was the truck. Everyone arrived at JHS on time and we loaded up the trailer and cars to go to the beginning of the parade. We were all set to wow the crowd. The parade started and then the truck wouldn't shift into drive... UGH! We tried everything we could but it just wouldn't shift. That's when all the floats started leaving. We were freaking out. 

Luckily, the people of Alexandria are incredibly nice. Someone loaned us a truck for the parade. I didn't catch his name but he is the most awesome person ever. It would have been TERRIBLE to work that hard and then not use our awesome float. But good things happen to good people, and we finally got into the parade at the very nick of time. By very nick of time, I mean that we were the last float. 

They definitely saved the best for last though. Our float looked great. The tissue paper and streamers really popped out on the street. The flag was beautiful. The robots were showcased. Good planning leads to good execution (except the truck, oops).

Bryce was in the Mechatron suit and he did an amazing job getting the crowd hyped up. He bumped fists with a ton of little kids. Taylor and Carson passed out half sheet pieces of paper with all of our contact information. Alicia and Kacy handed out candy to the happy kids. Bydlon drove the truck and danced to Queen which we had blasting out of a stereo in the back of the truck. Brandon, Allen, Dalton, and Luke took care of pushed and operating Murphy, our basketball robot. Molly drove Rover on the trailer. 

It was a team effort to make the parade such a success. Everyone working together and doing their jobs made it so much fun. The smiles and "oohs" and "ahhs" from the crowd made all the stress and work worth it. BIG THANK YOU to Jody and Chad Niesen for borrowing us the trailer and donating to our team. Team 3313 really does enjoy presenting to the public and making everyone aware of how cool Robotics is. Great work team!

AAEDC Small Business Luncheon

During our monthly meetings with the PMMC (our awesome, main local sponsor), they threw out the idea of having our team be the star of a Area Small Business Luncheon. Of course, we jumped at the idea.

Bryce, Molly, Kacy, and Bydlon brought over all the Robotics Team promotional items to advertise the team. They each did a speech about what the does, what FIRST is, and how it has changed their lives. It was a great experience and even more community exposure (one of our main team goals). Plus, as an added bonus, the team raised quite a bit of money. Some pictures are included. 

Robotics Carnival

The team has been meeting up every day this week to prepare for our Robotics Community Night. There is a lot to prepare for it. Just to get the plug out of the way from the beginning...

Robotics Community Night hosted by Team 3313 Mechatronics on Monday, April 30 from 7-9pm in the Jefferson High School gym in Alexandria, MN. Check out this article in the local newspaper, the Echo Press, for more information.

The team decided to basically change the entire format of the Community Night. Our big goal for the event was to show off all that we accomplished to our community while still making it fun and interactive. This coincides with our team mission statement, "build a robot, excite students about STEM education, and have fun". Returning members of the team enjoyed Community Night last year but it was really more like a banquet and very adult oriented. We are aiming for a more "all ages" crowd with our event this year.

The format we switched to is basically a science fair or school carnival. Team members will be spread out in the JHS gym at different exhibit stations. Each station will have a different theme that the students will talk about. The stations will also have an interactive aspect to them as well. For example, the field/competition station will talk about Rebound Rumble and have a half court shot contest similar to what Tyler did at the end of each game. Another example is the station with Murphy. Visitors will have the chance to drive the robot but will also learn about how we built it.

The team is really excited about the event and has been working hard to promote it. We have emailed countless community groups including: the City Council, School Board, sponsors, newspaper, tv, and radio. We also dropped off flyers at all of the places we have visited like schools and companies. We will continue our promotion by emailing schools tomorrow and writing announcements for our high school.

We want this event to be a fun learning experience for everyone that chooses to attend. If you're reading this and are from the Alexandria area, please plan to attend!

Lighting the Flame

This has been mentioned many times before but one of our team's main goals for the year was to expand the awareness and knowledge of our team in the community. We have been doing this in a variety of ways this year. We had a video game tournament, visited classrooms, visited local area clubs, presented to our sponsors, created many social network opportunities, and performed at a halftime show. We continued our efforts on Friday when we visited Discovery Middle School and Voyager Elementary School. Click "see more" below to read about how the day went.

Speaking Tour

It has a long time since a blog post update! Wow! Sorry about that. With the regional over, the team's activity and meetings have kind of slowed down or dwindled. That's ok. We have been pushing ahead with our Community Outreach agenda throughout April. We have presented two of the Alexandria elementary schools along with an area club.

 You really need to check out the video from our presentation at Woodland Elementary School. The excitement of the students was truly amazing. Seriously, stop reading for a minute and watch it. Awesome.

Robotics Is Awesome!

The team went up to Parker's Prairie Elementary School to help with their Robotics Week. The title is a quote from an elementary student.

Check The PWM Cables!

Today was the last day of build season. For a lot of the team members it was bittersweet. It is kind of nice to have the time off again so we can all catch up on homework but at the same time, it is sad to say goodbye to our robot for a while. Of course, with Team 3313 Mechatronics, even boxing up a robot cannot be easy...