Final month preparations

[joelg236]

There is now a little less than a month 'till kickoff! What little things does your team do during the last month that are usually overlooked by a lot of teams? Obviously there are things like supplies and teaching new students, but are there things that end up being invaluable later on that can be done now? I'm very excited for robots and want to make sure we are all prepared this year.

Oh yeah, and I've already thought of going on CD all day.

[sanddrag]

Say goodbye to friends and family

Honestly though, I'll be enjoying the calm before the storm. I worked on Christmas Eve and New Years day last year, restoring an old lathe and getting our lab ready. Not this time.

[F22Rapture]

Get your animations and Chairman's award paperwork out of the way before build season starts

Planning a pit design ahead of time isn't a bad idea either. As the season progresses you can look back on it and make changes, but it's much easier to start out some good ideas and gradually refine them throughout the season (hey, we forgot something!) than it is to have to think of everything in one go without making mistakes.

[Phyrxes]

I'm spending this weekend comparing VexPro products to some of the other products we traditionally purchase to have on hand, I think this is a good problem to have.

[midway78224]

Getting our standard building material ready. Teaching the new kids the process of going thought kickoff. Comparing items from andymark and vexpro. Getting ready for FIRST Choice. Can't wait less then a month to kick off.

Good luck to all the FRC teams this yr.

[lorem3k]

Get a head start on building the robot. How else are we going to gain an advantage over everybody else? (disclaimer: please adhere to all FRC rules and regulations.)

Start to prepare an area to work in, make sure all your tools and materials are properly organized, and get some new students to practice driving on previous robots and get a feel for what it's like to control 119.99 pounds of aluminium with wheels.

[gabrielau23]

Originally Posted by lorem3k

Get a head start on building the robot. How else are we going to gain an advantage over everybody else? (disclaimer: please adhere to all FRC rules and regulations.)

Start to prepare an area to work in, make sure all your tools and materials are properly organized, and get some new students to practice driving on previous robots and get a feel for what it's like to control 119.99 pounds of aluminium with wheels.

199.99 lbs? Thats it? Lol for 2537, we were at 120.0

[Kevin Selavko]

Originally Posted by gabrielau23

199.99 lbs? Thats it? Lol for 2537, we were at 120.0

120 pounds with battery and bumpers! Thats impressive

[Mk.32]

We are setting up our new mini lathe and mill as well as training students in every aspect of design/fabrication.

I am working out the final CAD designs for a new iteration of our WCD, and getting our stock of alum and parts refilled

Will be a fun season :3

[ttldomination]

We've actually been in PRE-FRC mode for a month or two now. Some plans fell through the cracks, others are still holding strong.

(1) We're buying things. FIRST Choice, all these PDVs, a weak inventory, and a new found drive means that we need to pick quite a few things. We're placing large orders now, and hopefully, large orders soon after we see the game.

(2) We're training people. This is not only the obvious training in CAD and programming, but rookies are also being brought up on the basic of manipulators/DT/competition/etc. and we're running them through old games. Just, quick, 20-30 minute brainstorming sessions.

(3) We're volunteering. The team is working on putting a bow on our volunteering with a string of FLL events coming up. This means that we will volunteer at FLL events for a solid 3-4 straight weekends.

(4) We're winding down. The end of the school year is upon us, and so we're looking at winding down the team. This means that, everyone gets a chance to think about and contemplate on designs/practices that we will hopefully use during the build season.

Cheers,
- Sunny G.

[gabrielau23]

Originally Posted by Kevin Selavko

120 pounds with battery and bumpers! Thats impressive

Well, actually, 120.0 withOUT Battery and bumpers.
Robot Weight (<= 120lbs excluding bumpers, and battery) <R03>
We were that close.

[z_beeblebrox]

We're fundraising, getting ready to move into our build space, and also working on a couple of engineering projects. We are entering two robots in Vex this weekend and also building a really cool practice FRC drivetrain. It is almost entirely made of Home Depot wood and parts from last year's robot and can support 6 or 8 4" to 8" wheels in omni corners or dropped center configuration. It will be used for testing mechanisms and software for next year's robot and for driver practice.

[Tom Line]

Tonight we inventoried all our electrical components, down to the last jumper and pwm cable.

We had a 2 hour meeting tonight with mentors and team captains to discuss what new tools we need: it looks like we'll be getting a belt sander / disc sander table combo and a pneumatic riveter. We're also ordering some new components to stress test them before we're confident enough to put them on our robot.

We also discussed our build schedule next year - we have it laid out very specifically.

We discussed all the 'George' jobs early in the season. You always have a lot of extra hands early on, and it's nice to have all your little jobs like crimping wires and pwms to hand to them.

Mechanical inventory and final room cleaning will happen next week.

[joelg236]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

We discussed all the 'George' jobs early in the season. You always have a lot of extra hands early on, and it's nice to have all your little jobs like crimping wires and pwms to hand to them.

Good tip. Seems like people slowly start to show up less and less as the build season goes on. Probably good to get stuff done while they're still interested.

[CalTran]

Rereading the New Cool before season starts, rapidly finishing up our off season prototypes, prebuilding a practice modular chassis for any type of drivebase, and redoing our robot cart so it will soon be a robot cart and a minicart.