Team 2980's Open Source FIRST BOT

[eedoga]

@ DavidGitz While the total weight of our arm is about 26 pounds that includes the base and other non-articulated parts. It would be asking a lot to try and have the motor move the arm when it is extended. We instead are planning on retracting the arm before rotating it. In fact the only time we should have to extend our arm is in order to reach the top peg.

That said we drove the robot around quite a bit today. We realized that we had the mecanum wheels mounted wrong and swapped them out. The robot handles a lot better thanks to the Chief Delphi community.

The arm seams to work a lot better especially if you don't wave it all over the place. :-) The motor was able to repeatedly move the arm without overheating, though that remains a concern.

Tomorrow we will be presenting the robot to the school board.

We just nominated two students for the Deans List award. While I'm sure what I had to say is the normal stuff to some FIRST participants, In our hearts and minds these two individuals stand out. Here is what I wrote about them.


Deans List Recommendation for Kyle

Kyle is the type of kid who seams to struggle with everything. During our “homework time” kyle is always asking for help with his history or math assignments. When working on the robot Kyle will often ask you to explain how something works several times, or how to cut out a part. As our team has grown from five to fifteen to more than thirty, there have been fewer and fewer jobs for Kyle to do. Yet still Kyle remains a fixture of our team.

There are other people on the team who are better at programming, designing, problem solving, and even fabricating than Kyle. But hands down there is no one with a bigger heart.

Last year our team found itself in one heck of a spot. Due to poor design and weight management our robot ended up being 20 pounds over weight. We discovered this when we weighed it the second to last day of the build season. Faced with a terrible choice of loosing our entire pneumatics system including our kicker and arm we decided instead to redesign our robot from scratch. Kyle worked tirelessly cutting brackets, drilling holes, sanding edges and even cleaning the room at the end of the day. While many others on the team were fading off, Kyle stayed until well after midnight.

Its Kyle who is waiting for me when I get to our Saturday and Sunday build sessions. Its Kyle who is asking to use the phone to tell his parents he will be heading home at the end of the night. Its Kyle who keeps track of where I left my coffee and its Kyle who runs to find someone a ratchet, drill bit, or even the rubber mallet. Kyle even takes out the trash. He does all of this with a smile on his face. At the regional last year Kyle spent all of his time trying to find other teams to lend parts to. He seams to love being a part of the team, and having some job that he can call his own, and we love having him.

If this doesn’t sum up the spirit of FIRST, then we don’t know what does.

Mr. Edoga and the rest of the Whidbey Island Wildcats.
Team 2980

Deans List Recommendation for Mary

Mary has been a member of the Oak Harbor Robotics Club (The Whidbey Island Wildcats) since the club first started 3 years ago. When we first started we only had 5 members and we all knew nothing about what we had signed up for. Mary Treis dove in to FIRST without a moments hesitation.

In our first year I received an envelope with a number of badges. One was green and said safety captain. Needless to say I had no idea what any of that was for, so I handed the green badge to Mary without really thinking about it. Mary being the smart girl she is went and looked up what her responsibilities were. Lets just say under her direction we are a much safer team. Mary is there to remind everyone to wear their safety gear.

Over the years our team has undergone “growing pains”. As the team has grown the responsibilities and demands placed on each member, especially the core members have decreased. Mary has gone from being a doer to being a director, and finally to being a leader. While I know she doesn’t always like delegating, Mary has taken on her new role with pride. Recently she commented that she was now a supervisor. If only she knew how important that roll was.

Our team recently acquired 6 brand new members. While they are already showing us how talented they are, they lack basic skills. Mary is always there to guide the new members teaching them the tricks that lead to straight cuts and accurate holes. She seams to know how to keep the new members occupied, and most importantly she keeps us all safe.

Mary is one of the most valued members of our team.

Edoga and the rest of the Whidbey Island Wildcats.
Team 2980

[DavidGitz]

Originally Posted by eedoga

@ DavidGitz While the total weight of our arm is about 26 pounds that includes the base and other non-articulated parts. It would be asking a lot to try and have the motor move the arm when it is extended. We instead are planning on retracting the arm before rotating it. In fact the only time we should have to extend our arm is in order to reach the top peg.

That said we drove the robot around quite a bit today. We realized that we had the mecanum wheels mounted wrong and swapped them out. The robot handles a lot better thanks to the Chief Delphi community.

The arm seams to work a lot better especially if you don't wave it all over the place. :-) The motor was able to repeatedly move the arm without overheating, though that remains a concern.

Ok, that's good to hear. I think the window motors are a great asset, if you are careful with the design and minimize friction/binding as much as possible.

Overheating is a concern to us. Normally we have been using one of the large muffin fans from the KOP on each arm window motor and it keeps them ice cold, even after running for 8 hours non-stop. However today we had to turn our window motors off due to some re-wiring (and putting fence material over the blades so fingers don't go in bad places...) and the window motors over-heated after about 25 minutes of driver practice and wouldn't budge until they cooled down.

[548swimmer]

It looks like you guys can cut weight out of the large sprocket