Janurary 30th, 2010: Day #22- Workday

January 30th. Day 22. Today is one of the few times in the season I actually knew what day it is. Anyway, it’s Saturday. We’re hard at work here, utilizing weekends because we can be here without the interference of school. Parts of the team had to leave early today, because it’s the day of the Sweetheart dance. The remaining portion of the team forced Ashwyn to leave, because he’s SWEETHEART KING!!!!

Build team worked on the robot. Shocker, right? In specific, Jeff and his followers (commonly referred to as mini-Giers) worked on every small aspect of the robot. When I checked with Jeff, his team was working on the mecanum wheels. Jeff, after everything, also worked on making sure everything ran smoothly, and generally helped wherever he could. He found something to do, and decided to work on assembling the drive train. Chris Lopez, a sub minion of Jeff, worked on “relocating the motors to a favorable position.”  This simply translates to moving them to somewhere where the chain will actually reach the wheels. Sean Boeck, also on the build team, worked on the hanging arm. He created a hanging mechanism, made a telescoping arm out of PVC, and even got an intra-team patent on this design It means the design was made exclusively by Sean Boeck . His proof of concept was completed today. I, your very amazing blogger, have even started working with Build team. My job was to track down and order some more parts for them. The part in specific was 14 feet of energy chain, from Igus.  Energy chain is basically like bike chain, but it only bends one direction. It’s what we’re using to extend our awesome hanging arm. Build team has been in the top 10 most productive sub-teams of Metal Mustang Robotics.

Programming, since they were done with mecanum drive, worked on the limit switches of the robot. One of the specifics of it was the Ball Magnet switch.  In theory, they should have one button to turn it on, and another to turn it off again.

Zach and Deepa worked on, and I quote, “Merrr.” I think it translates into removing the tape adhesive from the PVC of the old Pit. They even got to use these awesome gas masks when they were doing this. They were fully decked out gas masks, complete with the dual side chamber filters. After they removed the adhesive, they picked up another person for their team. Ryan, with the rest of them, proceeded to spray some old hats with silver pain in the snow. You could tell where they did this because of the various silver circles in the snow.

Public Relations worked on everything again. The term “everything” refers to filling out donation requests, getting food donations, and the Executive Summary. The Executive Summary is just the paperwork that goes along for the Chairman’s Award. It’s the specific information about the team that the Judges are looking for.  The food donation would be from Cosentino’s Food Store, because most of us are really tired of Costco pizza now.  Deepa, switching from build back to PR, got to editing Ashwyn’s mug shot.

Pictures of the day: