Hi all!
This will be our first year attempting to post some stuff with the open alliance. With our teams you get a two for. 3134 is our all female team and 3275 is our all male team out of Cass Lake high school in northern Minnesota.
Both of our teams are founding members of the Northern Minnesota robotics conference NMRC. A group of 30 teams in the northern part of the state that collaborate to host offseason events and training events throughout the year.
We are upper mid-level teams in our region occasionally making playoffs at our Regional events we attend.
We have experience in manufacturing.
Our team mentorship is mostly high school educators with a couple alumni helping out during build season.
We have always been very open and willing to share any and all information regarding our robots team structure, outreach activities etc.
We plan to post updates on Delphi and some videos to our YouTube channel https://youtube.com/@user-lw5ow6em6d
This summer, four of the NMRC teams were invited out to Palm springs, California to demonstrate at the American Indian science and engineering society conference. It was a great experience.
Also, there is a group of teams led by the NMRC that will be presenting at the Minnesota school board association conference in January.
Our teams just got our swerve drive chassis up and running as an off season project.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or comments.
Well week one is over. The Cass Lake teams have been busy unfortunately most of our busyness was not spent working on the robot.
We took a 200 mi trip south to Minneapolis, Minnesota for 3 days and presented at the Minnesota school board association conference. This is part of our stem outreach and spreading the word of first.
"“I wish they had this when I was in school,” was a frequently repeated quote from school board members this week. The Cass Lake-Bena Accelerators-3134 and Regulators-3275 joined the Nevis Tech-No-Tigers-3102, Alexandria Mechatronics-5773, Upsala UC-Botics-4480, Babbitt Iron Mosquitoes-5653 and Woodbury ERRORS-3130 at the Minnesota School Board Association’s annual conference in Minneapolis. The students had the opportunity to meet with every superintendent and school board member from across Minnesota. They coached the conference members on driving robots and shooting balls using last year’s game field elements. Each day 100s of conference attendees learned about FIRST Robotics.
We did feel a little bit bad. Missing build season days. But we believe it’s for the greater good.
We did get the opportunity to put some miles on our new swerve drive chassis and driver’s practice is always a good thing.
On to the build.
Team 3134 will be using the swerve drive specialties L2 MK4 modules with the falcon 500 setup. We would like to use the same setup for team 3275 but the ship date on those modules has us a bit nervous so 3275 has started to put together the Andy Mark kitbot, chassis.
Disassembly of 3134s 2022 robot is complete as we needed to salvage some motors and some gear boxes for our current build 6 weeks to build it 2 hours to tear it apart…
We hope to be able to manipulate both game pieces and place them anywhere on the grid. Our efficiency in doing so will determine our success.
Here’s a couple videos on our YouTube channel showing our progress so far.
End of week two.
I feel like we’re starting to gain a little traction.
Being that team 3275 ( our male team) has a lot of very new young team members and with the release of a very high functioning, every bot from 118 That is the route they are going to go. With this very young team, tool usage, robot part terminology and function are still part of the learning phase. Let alone programming. Given our schools manufacturing capabilities which are reasonably high, I feel we have a pretty good chance of making a good every bot clone. The chassis is done and powder coated. We are CNC cutting our own gussets and plates other parts needed are on order.
Team 3134 (our all female team) has more older students with more build experience. They are taking inspiration from the West Coast Products competitive concept robot. Our swerve drive chassis was running but we did a little disassembly to give it some color.
We CNC cut the grabber arms and rectangular tube structure to support it. We powder coated and assembled the arms and structure. 3D printed the gates belt, pulleys and assembled it.
This robot is going to employ the Thrifty Bot single stage elevator for up and down movement and instead of the WPC gearboxes we will be using the REV Max planetary system for wrist and elevator actuation.
Students are also working on our super pit design based off of 4414 High Tides pit.
And if that isn’t enough our teams are part of the northern Minnesota robotics conference which owns its own field and hosts off season events including week zero so we are building a full as similar as possible grid game pieces. Other teams in our conference are building the human player stations and the charging station.
Here is our week two recap on YouTube
The northern Minnesota robotics conference has also teamed up with R&J Broadcasting and are doing weekly updates with teams that are broadcast on regional radio stations and posted to YouTube. Check out our first two weeks of interviews!.
Team 3275 now has there upgraded every bot chassis driving. Upgrades include brushless motor falcon drivetrain And a thick steel belly pan to lower center of gravity. Most of their structural upper assembly has been cut in powder coated. So starting next week we will begin assembly of that.
Team 3134 utilizing concepts from the West Coast Products Competitive concept machine, have there intake arm completed except for the pneumatics and the carriage for the linear slide completed and assembled. We 3D printed our own pulleys tube plugs. Thrifty Bot elevator parts came in on Friday and assembly started on Saturday.
It seems like it’s all coming together but we need to make sure that we get enough driver practice time as that is going to be crucial to this year’s game. Hopefully We get the remainder of our parts in and are able to start truly testing and driving by next weekend.
Our super pit is coming together and nearing completion.
Our grid field element setup got sanded and painted this weekend. Again, this will be used for several off season events so we are creating enough for a full field.
If your team is doing it Every Bot or a West Coast Products type of bot, Feel free to reach out!
Check out our video for our week 3 update. It also includes a brief shop tour!
Also, check out the your live event team interviews for week 3.
Good luck teams. We look forward to seeing you at the Great Northern Regional in Grand Forks, North Dakota week two and the Idaho Regional in Nampa, Idaho week five.
