Solid Works

We're learning solid works! ... but that's about it.

In case you're unfamiliar with the program, it is a program that allows you to create a three dimensional rendering of anything you plan to build: motors, shell, building... like I said, anything. You make the separate parts and then put them together to create one functional product.

The purpose of designing through solid works is that all measurements will be exact and you can know ahead of time if everything will fit together. It's very helpful and with any luck, our robots will actually plan out this year.

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.

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.

I know I know... consistency is not our strong suit.

Very well. As many of you may have already assumed, we are not going to be building a translational drifter, but oh how we have tried. For the most part, we just kept having technical difficulties and of course the one person who had any prior experience in this design stopped communicating with us.

Since then we have been put into overdrive and are racing to redesign, rebuild, and finish. We have moved over to a twackbot model which drives normally but can be set into spin mode to brandish its 5 pound weapon. This is a big deal.

The design is a bit simple but with only spring break to work on it, it's the best the Misfits can afford.

Today is our last building day before the competition on Wednesday and I personally am confident that we will do well. The nationals are in Miami and we hope to take home the gold.

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.