|
Re: How many days have you lost to snow or other inclement weather?
The week before kickoff we decided that due to the December 19th storm we'd better account for some sort of snow. Sure, we had no idea it'd be like this; officially our area has had 37" in the last few days, and that's more than there has ever been on record. Yet we did plan to have at least Iteration One done by the end of week 4. That single constraint led to many design decisions of COTS vs custom, 'specialist' strategies, etc. It's also led to many fringe benefits such as being able to focus on the small custom machined parts on a small, critical subassembly. This part was done by a shop who bought a waterjet just to keep the lights on during the winter that we wouldn't have had the time to find had we not had snow. We also wouldn't have focused on improving the part if we were also designing for every possible strategy.
We've lost ~45 previously scheduled build hours (times ~10 solid 'laborers' that is still a huge chunk of time...). Our robot is not at the school; we got most everything out last Thursday night. If we can't meet, it's literally because the roads are dangerous. Since the high school was also a local warming shelter for those without power, our fearless leader braved the weather to go in and get some raw materials from the school while she could. We've been meeting in very small subgroups since then with a flurry of emails to keep it all together. With any luck, this Saturday we will be able to integrate the sub assemblies together. We will only kick, not hang. Thursday we might add a bar to the bot for others to pull us up, but until we know what types of bots are in DC, I don't think that will be a focus.
This is the year that I'm thankful for KISS.
(And JVN/Karthik's presentations that explain the golden rules of competitive robots)
We will bring some extra tools/material to DC to assist on Thursday. As for the scrimmage, at this point I'm not sure that we're attending.
__________________
Drive Coach, 1885 (2007-present)
CAD Library Updated 5/1/16 - 2016 Curie/Carver Industrial Design Winner
GitHub
|