Well with the time winding down SO quickly, and 100 days until kick-off (+/- a few hours), what is your team doing to prepare for the 2012 season.
My team is doing the beta test in C++, and building a new chassis. We will be training our new members C++, and solidworks. Our team has been relocated in our school so we are organizing our pits and the new room.
We have grade 7/8 dances for fundraising (10 through the whole year) bringing in around 2000-3000 dollars per dance (best fundraiser for us).
Our team is learning to use various sensors (encoder, gyro. etc.) and getting the new members up to speed on what FIRST is, designing the robot. Then we help them find their niche and work with them on expanding that. I myself am learning CAD.
We are also doing much fundraising and participating at club fairs.
Our rookies are participating in FTC, we currently have two FTC teams, so we have ~20 new members.
Our veterans are working/practicing on our 2011 robot, getting it ready for Cow Town Throwdown in November, as well as helping the FTC teams.
We’re also getting ready to host a Robotics Open House at our school in October, we’re inviting local teams to come and play robots with us and we’re also inviting school administration and sponsors, and pretty much anyone else to spread the mission of FIRST. We also are planning on going to similar events like the Engineering Career Day at the St. Louis Science Center and the STEM Extravaganza at our school.
A few of us will also help mentor FLL teams at our district’s middle schools.
I have to teach Rookies how to use Labview, install/update programs on our computers, all that jazz.
And along with all of this, fundraising for the great season up ahead.
My team is currently building an off-season robot project to prepare us for the season ahead. The project we chose was to build a driven t-shirt cannon from the ground up, and we’re using all of the aspects of the build process from a normal season in the completion of this project.
We meet regularly to work on this as well as starting our fundraising and talking about our plans for the season.
During the summer we started re-designing our entire pit and will be building all new structures for it once the CAD work is done (yes, we’re cadding our pit.) It’s also been great practice for some of our members. We’ll post pictures of it as it is completed. Should be pretty awesome.
During the Fall and early winter, we have a goal to build and perfect as much as possible a west coast drive train. No idea if we’ll ever decide to use it but once again, good CAD practice, good building practice, and hopefully we’ll learn from some mistakes along the way.
While working on the drive-train, we also hope to perfect our own custom 2-speed gearbox’s that will also have the option for a third motor. Never know when that will be useful.
Some of our students are also working on VEX or FTC so that’s keeping everyone busy.
We tested Geoffrey in anticipation of our community Fall Festival tomorrow and the Rumble on October 8th. We also have continued restoring the 2001 robot for Fall Festival.
After that, it’s talent search for kids who want to market, design a new pit space for competition using SketchUp, and using AutoCAD for our fall design challenge.
So excited, if apprehensive over it being my senior year.
We did this last year. They were extrusion and diamond plate with casters for easy moving. We (by “we” i mean “I”) CADed them in Solidworks. They are extremely useful and easy to move. Fit perfectly into the trailer (not on purpose, they almost didn’t fit by accident). WE LOVE THEM!
(best fundraiser for us).