Our Progress

Saturday, January 7, 2006
Team kickoff at the East Hartford Remote Kickoff and the Manchester, NH Live Kickoff. Pictures from the Manchester, NH Kickoff were posted to the picture galleries on the 2006 FRC Kickoff Photo Album.

Sunday, January 8, 2006
Annual pot luck dinner in the Platt cafeteria. Took inventory of kit and introduced the new Aim High game.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006
We built part of the ramp. We also tested possible ideas for a new drive train.

Thursday, January 12, 2006
Built the vision camera assembly, vision target, and started building idea prototypes.

Saturday, January 14, 2006
This was a long all-day meeting, with a lot of work being accomplished. Many of the ideas for prototypes were started.

Monday, January 16, 2006
Finished and tested idea for a ball shooter. There was also a lot more more work on the FVC robot.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006
We built a prototype frame out of wood, as well as more work on our FVC robot.

Thursday, January 19, 2006
We built a prototype for a ball intake system, and did a lot of calculations about possible robot designs. In addition, several ideas for a ball "hopper" designs were discussed.

Saturday, January 21, 2006
We a lot of our ideas, and finished building prototype designs of them. Through the testing and prototyping, we settled on a final design for our ball management in the robot. The FVC Team also accomplished a lot on their robot, including getting a nice ball collection/intake system built and working.

Monday, January 23, 2006
We received a lot of parts for our robot today, including wheels and transmissions. The FVC team continued work on their ball intake system.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006
We began to get our transmissions ready to be mounted on the robot. Final modifications were made to the FVC team's ball intake system.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006
No meeting, but our team's lathe was moved out of storage and into our private machining room.

Thursday, January 26, 2006
The Meriden Board of Education had our lathe and milling machine wired up today. We began to do more work in the Lab View environment to get the CMUcam2 vision system working.

Saturday, January 28, 2006
We assembled our new frame, and came in at 15.4 pounds, one pound under the projected weight. The culprit was a dimensioning error that caused our frame to become two inches shorter than originally planned. Oops.

Sunday, January 29, 2006
Worked continued on the Vex robot, as well as the FRC robot. The drafty ventilation duct in our machining room was finally insulated, allowing the temperature in our machining room to finally reach normal room temperature (as opposed to like 55° F). Machining of backlogged parts continued at a feverish pace.

Monday, January 30, 2006
While work continued on the frame and wheels of our FRC robot, the Vex robot was being put "through its sea trials". The new arm design worked well, as it could pick up off the floor, autoloader, and then score the balls into either the side goal or the center goal. Work continued on the Dewalt transmissions for the FRC robot.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006
The IFI-clone traction wheels were assembled and treaded, and the machining of axles and pillow blocks for the robot continued.

Thursday, February 2, 2006
The transmission mounting plates were finished, and the transmissions and wheels were mounted onto the frame for the first time. While the team worked on mounting one of the transmissions, work continued the shifting mechanisms on the other two Dewalt transmissions.

Saturday, February 4, 2006
The other transmission, and subsequent two wheels were mounted on the robot. The ramp was brought down to the library for an "alpha-test" of the drive train. The robot worked fine, except the servo shifting mechanism would sometimes jam. After the driving trials, work started on shimming the servos on the transmissions so that they would shift easier.

Sunday, February 5, 2006
Work continued on our custom transmission made from Lexan and the gears from a stock Fisher-Price transmission. We also continued to machine many parts for our robot, including mounting plates for the center elevator transmission and the floor / human player ball intake rollers.

Monday, February 6, 2006
We almost finished work on the custom transmission for the ball intake system, and we discussed in length about possible control features on the operator interface.

Tuesday, February 7, 2006
Work continued on shimming the servos on the Dewalt transmissions, as well as on other various smaller components on the robot.

Thursday, February 9, 2006
We finally finished shimming the servos on our shifting transmissions, and remounted them onto the robot.

Friday, February 10, 2006
We continued to work on fabricating a large backlog of parts needed for the center elevator and ball spiral. The custom Lexan transmission for the ball intake system was mounted into place.

Saturday, February 11, 2006
Our new pep club supplies arrived first thing in the morning. The Lexan support pieces for our ball spiral were cut out and spray painted orange. The center support pieces for the ball spiral and the center elevator were assembled.

Sunday, February 12, 2006
No meeting today due to a twenty-two inch blizzard in progress.

Monday, February 13, 2006
We worked all-day long on the ball spiral structure. We also started machining our custom joystick handles.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006
No meeting - Happy Valentine's day!

Wednesday, February 15, 2006
The lower rails of the ball spiral were completed today; the completed ball spiral could hold all 25 Poof balls that we had.

Thursday, February 16, 2006
Work started on our turret / tilt / shooter mechanism. We also continued to wire our electronics boards. Our center elevator motor, transmission, and shafts were also mounted.

Friday, February 17, 2006
Work continued on the shooter, tilt, and turret mechanisms until late at night (wee early morning hours)

Saturday, February 18, 2006
We worked for several hours in the morning, before going up to the UTC (Winter War Zone) Scrimmage after lunch. After watching about an hours' worth of matches, we return to our work shop to work on the robot.

Sunday, February 19, 2006
Work continued on the turret, tilt, and shooter mechanisms. When we weighed in at the near lunch time, the robot only weighed in at 90.0 pounds. We also continued to work on our operator interface and customized joysticks.

Monday, February 20, 2006
We drove the robot in the library and gymnasium to test out all the mechanisms and components on it. We also tested and saw that it can successfully pick up balls off the floor, shoot them into the center goal, and get onto the ramp. We also conducted extensive accuracy testing of our Poof ball shooter.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006
We worked on finishing up the turret and tilt mechanism, the bumpers for the robot, and the last little bit of the wiring. We assembled the robot crate shipped the robot to the FedEx distribution center.