Up Dates

Ok so this might end up being a very long post... my fault for never updating.

Anyways, we did build a 120 this year, but not exactly the way we expected. For most of the year we worked on a shell we found at the shop and stripped it of all its parts. We were going to re-purpose it weapon-wise by giving it a spinning eggbeater type weapon rather than a drum. Unfortunately we ran into financial issues and that led to time management issues because we lost time trying to find a good price on good metal. We ended up just buying the cheapest steel we could find but as things usually turn out for us we backed out of the competition, not having enough time to finish.

I mean, we would normally just build up to the last second, but we would also have to pay up 500 dollars if we didn't finish because of registration. Most of us weren't willing to risk it and tensions boiled. Several fights broke out but at least everything is all peachy keen now. But back to February.

So there are four days left until check in for the competition and we have no robot. Our teacher suddenly informs us that we need to finish up a hammer bot (sound familiar?) that our friends had been working on but couldn't finish. Although I'm not sure, I don't think we would have been penalized the 500 dollars for this robot if we didn't finish.

We got to work immediately, rewiring the entire robot. Two huge motors, another one that would spin a bar that would lift the hammer, and four lead batteries; the robot is old, I know that. Most of our money raised at our garage sale went towards Watson (named after the jeopardy robot). The last night we had to work on him we stayed until midnight and got everything to work... miraculously. We still had some issues. Because of weight issues we had to forgo two of the batteries, giving us very short running time. The hammer was extremely faulty and the bar kept slipping on the shaft, but we didn't care. It worked!

At competition we got both Watson and Kanye past inspection... it's possible the baked goods we brought with us might have helped... just kidding.

Kanye by the way received a steel bottom plate and an aluminum top. Much better than the plastic we'd originally been using. No zip ties either, we actually tapped the holes this time around to get the top on.

Competition didn't go too well unfortunately. Kanye's motors got stripped two minutes in... we've replaced them three times. I think it's safe to say we won't be buying those ever again. As for Watson, the batteries kept getting disconnected because of our carelessness. It was a bummer because our first match was against Fuffy del Large, our friends from Ransom's robot.

That thing is insane. A quick recap of the competition: this robot went undefeated to the finals where it competed against El Cholo, Ransom's other robot. Fluffy beat El Cholo and then had a match against Witch Doctor the first place winner of the professional league and WON! I'm proud to be their friend.

And back to the Mechanical Misfits (sorry I'm all over the place). We lost our first two matches in both divisions and one of our motors on Watson fell completely off the shaft. At least it's only up hill from here. Yes, I'm disappointed with our losses because we might have had a chance if only we'd been more responsible. There were a lot of things I should have done like check the connections and the motors but oh well. I have no regrets... or at least I know I shouldn't have any. I definitely have hope!

We got ourselves a mentor with the help of our baked goods and are already working on our robot for next year. We're beginning with solid works.

Oh, I almost forgot, we bought a team fish named the Littlest Misfit. I will upload photos when I can figure out how to.

Phase 1

Curious as to what's been going on?

Well basically we've been to the shop a couple times and have gotten the ball rolling.

Phase 1 is basically the October 23 competition for 15 pounders. We will be resurrecting Lil' Kanye for this event. He's pretty much done but his motors have to be changed because they are just way too slow.

Of course, us being us, the new motors we ordered were too big but not an entire waste because they will probably work for our 120 pound robot... yes we are finally joining the big boys ... or should I say big girls (I'm aware of my failure of a joke). Anyway, at this point we are waiting for the new-new motors to come in so that we can improve Lil' Kanye.

This year looks good and the Mechanical Misfits are optimistic.

Back to the Old Plan

Since my last post a lot of things have happened, the most important being that we are back to building a 15 pound robot. The reason for this is that our design is extremely complicated and difficult not to mention dangerous. It is of the utmost importance that we first make it work on a smaller scale before moving up to the heavy weight class.

Luckily we are already builidng, all we are waiting for is the compiler necessary for programing our robot. We should be up an running pretty soon!

Another bit of interesting news is that our team as added two more people making a total of 7. One of those two is actually taking my place of driver seeing how she is incredibly awesome. At last year's competition she managed to rake in the most points in a single match even with a broken robot. And driving is basically as important as building.

Also, we have gotten our first sponsorship. Smoothie King as agreed to give us 20 percent of the profits on sales made on this coming wednesday. We are all very excited and hope to get enough money to cover some of your major expenses on the robot.

Big Changes All Around

Ok so first off, at the Bot Pop competition at the local science museum Batbot recently outfitted with razorblades and sharp scrap metal won two out of four matches. In the competitions we had to pop ten balloons of our assigned color and pop the white balloon attached to the back of the opponent's robot. It was double elimination and although we lost, we aren't discouraged because the two matches we lost, were very close just a balloon difference.

Now onto the big change. We are no longer doing a 15 pound robot. We are going for the heavy metal... 120 pounds of pure amazingness. As of now we are keeping the design we had for the smaller robot and just modifying it for a larger one. Our first move however is to network and find sponsors in order to pay for our expenses in actually building this monstrous robot.

Thirdly, one of team members resigned and two more have been added making a total of 5 members on the Mechanical Misfit team. More might be on the way but that depends on how well one of our fellow teams holds togther.

Exciting News!

Well first off, Batbot is going to be competing in a small competition in a local museum. We do however have to modify him so that he can pop ballons since that is the competition.
In any case the real news is that our final design for this year's fifteen pound robot is decided. Hopefully you can bear with me and understand that the actual design must be kept top secret for now but just be asured that it is very exciting.