Summer Robotics

[Pengiun Joe]

Just curious: What does your team do over the summer?

We have some problems because a lot of people tend to scatter, but we have enough committed people to do some things. Every year we build a float for Homecoming and the Ypsilanti Heritage Festival Parade. We also share a large booth with team 470 at the Heritage Festival, and spend three days talking to people and demoing our robots. We also do a little bit of fundraising, and this year we are displaying at the Ann Arbor Art Fair. What do some other teams do?

[Stephanie]

this year, we're trying to track down a corporate sponsor, teaching our new recruits, and doin a little socializing . also, we're prepping the 'bot for the Cal Robot Games in sept, and a couple of our guys are working on a really awesome cart

[Wetzel]

This summer we are having Weekend day at Dave's. Each weekend, we spend 5 hours or so at Dave's garage. He has a mill and lathe, and lots of stuff we hauled from our shop. Like scrap aluminum and old robot parts. We are doing such fun things as cutting through 2 inch steel with a hacksaw, many times over. This is for an idea for a gear box that shifts.
Also planned, rebuilding a lawnmower engine and turning that into a minibike. That is somewhat of a side project of a few of us, but help rebuilding teh engine is most likey needed.

Other then that, one of the parents is having the team to their beach house for a weekend thing.

Also the MD State Fair competition.

And finding the ability to do/have done welding next year.'


Wetzel

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I think I will stick this on my wall as a todo list...

[ColleenShaver]

T190 spends the summer doing:

- LOADS of demos (we average 50+ a year)
- Lots of fun summer competitions (Rally in the Valley, Mayhem, Battlecry (which we also run), Riverrage, MD this year, Bash at the Beach)... any we can find within reasonable distance (or Indiana)
- 2-week summer FIRST robotics camp as a part of Frontiers @ WPI
- Fixing everything we break. Although the robot still has a giant piece aluminum riveted on the front holding the two side together. We'll get it fixed soon enough

And we have an end of season party. And we play crud. And all that fun stuff

[fast frank]

last summer, we at 271 took over an air conditioning shop. we'd go there every thursday, from about 3 to 11. we built 5 different drive systems/bases. we plan on doing the same this summer, but we might actually get permission to do it at the school.

[Rob Ribaudo]

My team went to Smithtown Day here in, well, Smithtown. We had demonstrations of our robot, a fund raiser, made elementary school and middle school students excited about doing FIRST in high school, were able to find two new sponsors, and had lots of fun.
If you have been reading in the Chit-Chat forum and have seen the Hovercrafts thread, that is also what some members of the team want to do.
Not sure if we are doing and more fund raisers or demonstrations, I'll have to ask about that.

[Katie Reynolds]

This summer, our team is meeting every other Thursday. The meetings serve two purposes: to have everyone catch up on what's going on and so we can tear apart the car transmission we've been working on! We're also doing team activities outside of FIRST (camping is one of our bigger activities this summer) and then of course there is IRI and possibly having a spot at the Wisconsin State Fair. Then there are random demonstrations, the robot being shown off at our two main sponsors buildings ... Yeah, that's about it until the fall!

- Katie

[Aaron Lussier]

We at 151 over the summer got together right after school let out (june 14th) and had a meeting where we sugested things that we could work on over the summer such as:

Drive system
Chassis
Tread study
Design implemation
Tranmission

There was a few more but I can't remember them at the moment
then every body who was at the meeting choose one or two of these to do over the summer when ever they had some free time. By kick off next year we will have all ready built a mock robot and have basic designs for all parts of the robot then customize it for the competition that year.

[Caroline]

Following with our tradition, we will spend our summer in our school's machine shop doing some renovation and clean up. One summer we re-painted all the walls, the next summer we built new work tables and re-organized our computer area, and this summer we are building a shelf to store our old robots on and cubbies for our team members. Oh, and every summer there is the wonderful task of sorting fasteners, everyone's favorite job!

We also begin animation tutorials and plan out our community outreach projects towards the end of summer.

[Ricky Q.]

We are:

Getting Ready for IRI
Building A New Cart
Doing Different Workshops (Software/Mechanical, etc...)
Fundraising

[Adam Y.]

Im building a robot by myself. Beyond that, it gets a little blurry.

[Ashley Weed]

Since our team covers several hundred square miles, we will be attending events (fairs, festivals, etc.) throughout all of Northeastern Pennsylvania and South Central New York State. I will be preparing for the MD State Fair/NASA event!

[evulish]

Hey weedie

We're taking Chuck to a local fair for all of next week 12 hour days...for 7 days I think. Fun fun troyfair.com hehe

[Hubicki]

Our team is having weekly administrative meeting to organize things for next year. Mostly we discuss how we're going to pull of the season and increase our budget. Unfortunately.. we cant get the man-power together to work on technical study of the robot because of our financial issues. We also plan activities such as car-washes, sponsorship presentations, and our participation at the state fair. Thats what we're doing.
~Hubicki~

[Ashley Weed]

Hey, just a reminder, anyone in the PA NY region next week feel free to stop in! We'll be at the Troy Fair underneath the grandstand!