Pittsburgh - Did you like our grabber? Team 188 - The Blizzard

[abreu4prez]

118, that was a good idea for a gripper.

The human player with the hockey helmet, that was awesome.

[melfiman]

I loved the grabber design, just the lift needs some work. If you made the lift more reliable, you could've been one of the top teams at Pittsburgh

[meaubry]

Unique and very capable grabbing device. Keep the rest together and you guys will do fine. Thanks for selecting us as your partner, better luck in the upcoming regional in Waterloo - I come by and say hi in Atlanta.

[Steve W]

This is a photo of our helmet. Our designer and mentor is modeling it. Proud to be on Team 188 the style setting team of FIRST.

Photos of our grabber will be released as soon as someone gets them off the computer at school.

[Rombus]

You had me and our teams 2 advisors scratching our heads during one of the last matches of friday when we finally got a chance to see how it worked. The convo went something like this:

Me: Woah, Check out that HP with a tetra on his head ducking under that bot
Mr. N: Intresting...wait, he is going to grab another one,
Mr. R: Wait? How is he taking two????
Me: He is going back for a third! oh wait, never mind
Mr. R: How in the heck are they DOING THAT?
Me: Well, i would guess theres latches that hold both up at the same time, so they have to drop them both on one goal....WOAH! They only dropped one!
Me: Ohhhh, they have 2 sets of clips to hold it in

Our only complait was that it was pretty wild when you spun around! very good idea though!

[mathking]

I really liked the ability of your grabber to release the tetra's one at a time. That was something that most of the multi-tetra grabbers could only do with great difficulty. Plus it was just plain cool, particularly when loading. With the great reach on your arm, if you guys can keep it from coming apart you should be able to go far at the Championships. We're looking forward to seeing you there. Thanks for picking us for the elimination round. (We were kind of sweating there after the mix-up with the picking knocked us from being alliance captains to waiting as several teams passed us by.)

[Steph]

Your grabber was for sure fun to look at we played one match with you guys, and a couple against, and watching your HP load that thing never failed to entertain me. Awesome job guys, see you in Waterloo.

[Steve W]

As promised, pictures of our grabber. This was designed and built by Philip Wang one of our grade 10 students. When Philip first brought forth the idea I said that it would never work and was way too complex. We continued proto typing other ideas. Philip was relentless and continued to push his idea. I told him to show me a prototype and sent him off. He came back with a crude wooden prototype that seemed to look good and almost worked. He was told to go back and do one in aluminum. After he brought this one forward we knew that we were going with his idea. There was a lot of tweaking and finishing off but when completed we believe that this is the best grabber in FIRST (so maybe I am bias). I was amazed at what Philip came up with and I am very proud of him for pushing this idea and following through. Philip had others helping him from the team and I can say that the grabber is at least 95% student designed and built.

[Karthik]

This grabber is really something special. It opens up a lot of strategies. Having the ability to hold two tetras and score them one at a time, makes row creation a lot easier. I've seen teams who can hold tetras on their base, but they need to reload with the arm each time. I'm positive that this grabber will bring home a technical award in Waterloo or Southern California.

[Mr. Lim]

Originally Posted by Steve W

Philip had others helping him from the team and I can say that the grabber is at least 95% student designed and built.

95%... sounds about right... but only because the students aren't allowed to use the table saw! *lol*

I'm glad we were able to share the entertainment value of this grabber with the FIRST community in Pittsburgh. Needless to say, this grabber brings big smiles to the faces of all the students who built it everytime our human player slams a pair of tetras into it from beneath. It's too bad most people are too far away to hear the satisfying "CLICK" noise it makes when they're inserted.

See you all in Waterloo and SoCal!

Hopefully we'll be able to win some kind of award that will let us go to the Championship in Atlanta this season!

-SlimBoJones...

[Anthony Kesich]

Originally Posted by SlimBoJones

Needless to say, this grabber brings big smiles to the faces of all the students who built it everytime our human player slams a pair of tetras into it from beneath.

Slams a pair of tetras? You're allowed to load more than one tetra at once? I was always under the impression that you could load multiple, but you would have to load one, have the person run back, pull out of the loading station, pull back in, and load another.

If you really can load multiple at once, that would make life great for us.

Either way, I must say thats a great grabber design. Gets rid of the big problem of dropping the tetras, eh? Its amazing what underclassmen can come up with when you let them loose to design. Thats how our grabber came into existance...

-Tony K

[Mr. Lim]

Originally Posted by Anthony Kesich

Slams a pair of tetras? You're allowed to load more than one tetra at once? I was always under the impression that you could load multiple, but you would have to load one, have the person run back, pull out of the loading station, pull back in, and load another.

What you described is exactly what we do... sorry if I confused people by implying we load more than one tetra per trip.

-SlimBoJones...

P.S. Although we only had to do it once ever in competition, the thing picks up great from the autoloader too. *maybe I shouldn't have said that *

[Anthony Kesich]

Awwww... you smashed my dreams. We might have been able to put 2 in our grabber if that was the case... Ehh, we'll just have to find another way.

[thoughtful]

Wow! After much hype about the grabber i finally got to see the images, and i must say it is a beauty. Its a very unique and effective design. Kudos to your team on implementing something this great.

Too bad we are not coming to Waterloo, i would love to see this in person. Regardless, a job well done and best of luck!

[omutton]

Originally Posted by SlimBoJones

...
See you all in Waterloo and SoCal!

-SlimBoJones...

Speaking of Waterloo, what is the planned team social?