What came first the Budget or the Design?

Alright, so great news everybody. We have acquired a shell for our 120!

What do I mean by this? Well, my team and I decided on going forward on our plans to create a 120 pound vertical spinner. To do this we would have to create a monetary budget, and weight budget as well as a design. The problem encountered was that the materials in our design plan would depend on the budget and our budget couldn't be created until we had a plan. It's safe to say we were stuck in quite a hole.

Fear not! While at the shop, we found an empty shell of a past robot. Shocker, was its name. The shape is hexagonal with one end elongated. Every edge is slanted so as to serve as a wedge. The old motors are still in the robot and work but we're almost certain we'll be replacing them. Originally, Shocker was a drum but it'll be re-purposed to fit our plans. I'm excited, the team is excited, and we finally have a jumping point to start off of.

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.

And the Year Begins

Hello everyone! It has been our first week back to school (so long, Summer, we'll miss you) and having learned from last year's timing issues we have already held several meetings.

Meeting #1

I presented my new organizing strategy which basically consists of documenting everything that is done at the shop and everything that needs to be done in a binder/notebook that stays at the shop. What this does is ensure that whoever goes--even if they did not go the previous time--will be aware of what is going on. This will allow anybody to go and work on the robot. The reason I find this necessary is because this past year there was a team member that went every time and not everyone could go when she could. What ended up happening was that there were people that were sometimes uninformed about the going ons of the robot and because of this they became unable to go on their own. This significantly reduced the effectiveness of having a big team because now it no longer became about having people go when they could, but rather about going when the most people could go. In turn, there were more people there than were needed. Unfortunately this caused internal problems which led to part two of the meeting

A member of the team felt that the size of the Mechanical Misfits was inefficient and should be cut down somehow. She decided that splitting into two teams would be best; others however, did not feel the same. The team was nonetheless split when she said she would quit the team as would another member, leaving the rest of us to choose to stay or join them. It ended with a new addition to the team joining them and the other three remaining as Mechanical Misfits (3 girls quit robotics) . Two days later, the girl who had first decided to split the team felt that six girls was sufficiently small enough and thus the Mechanical Misfits stick together.

Note: there are only two girls left from the original freshman year team.

Meeting #2

We held the first design meeting on Friday and after must deliberation rested on two possibilities for a 120 pound robot.

1. a wedge drum combo

2. a geometric shape with wedges on all sides with a spinning hammer mechanism on the top

Hopefully we can choose by the end of next week.

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.