Meeting and Practice 2-21-09

Attendance: Ian, Kevin, Tucker, Penelopy 

Kevin: In the morning I finished the soldering of the LED leads. We then wired the LEDs to the Protoboard. 

Ian: Kevin and I drove the robot and scored a large number of pucks to the triangle. I fixed the tubes when they pulled apart.  I wired the LEDs to the protoboard and realized why a couple of them didnt turn on.  The problem is a couple of the power leads are broken somewhere but the control signals work.  We decided that we could solder two power wires together because they are diodes and the signals only go one way. After soldering the wires all 8 lights work.  We are working on code to read and manipulate the touch sensors through the proto board.

Tucker: I trimmed the polycarb because it was getting in the wat of the wheels on the ramp.I also helped rebuild the arm.  I also made sure that the blog is correct and up to date.

Meeting 2-20-09

Attendence- Kevin, Ian

Agenda- Finish polycarb, Paint, mount Prototype Board

kevin: first we bent and drilled the polycarb. Then when we got to Ian's we painted it and finished some more of the detail work. Later we soldered the LEDs for the protoboard. We continued to make the team tee-shirts.

Meeting 2-19-08

Attendence- Ian, Kevin

Agenda- Cut and bend polycarb

I cut out the polycarb and started bending it.  i didn't have time to finish it though.-  Ian

I worked mainly on code but helped Ian with the bending.  -Kevin

Meeting 2-18-09

Attendence- Ian, Kevin, Tucker

Agenda- Arm Reinforcement, Polycarb.

i marked the polycarb to be cut.  -Kevin

I worked on reinforcing the arms with Tucker.  -Ian

Meeting 2-17-09

Attendence- Ian, Kevin, Penelope

Agenda- Finish gearing, test arm, build polycarb

We finished the gearing and tested the arm, but we didn't have time to do the polycarb.  -Ian

meeting 2-16-09

Attendence- Ian, Tucker, Kevin, Jared

Agenda- Finish the gearing, re-wire the servos, re-gear upper arm, test, make polycarb cutouts on paper

I worked on the arm gearing, rewired the servos for the bucket and worked on one of the polycarb sides.  -Tucker

I worked on the polycarb and upper arm gearing, and tested the arm.  -Ian

Meeting 2-13-09

Attendence-Ian, Jared, Penelope, Nick

I found out that the gearing on the lower arm is too high, so we are going to try and remount it to a 6-to-1 gear ratio.  -Ian

I worked with Ian to find a way to remount the lower arm motor so it doesn't kill itself. -Nick

Meeting 2-10-09

Attendence- Ian, Tucker, Penelope

Agenda- Swap out broken pieces, fix code, test arms

Turns out the tubes need clamps on both ends so they don't slip out of the clamps.  Which means that before we can test the arms we have to remove the tubes and put tube clamps in the ends.  -Ian

I helped Ian remove the tubes to fit clamps in them and tried not to lose anything, even though i mostly helped FRC.

Meeting 2-7-09

Attendance: Ian, Tucker, Penelope

Agenda:

Fix the robot

test the robot in the arena

work on software

We had two split clamps that had to be swapped out for ones with set screws on the pipe connecting a couple of our axles.  To do that we had to take the whole arm structure off and take the tube out.  Fixing this only caused more problems, first it was those two clamps slipping but they couldn't with the set screws.  The tube started slipping in its clamps.  During this progress, we took the robot to the feild to test it at various points of "completeness".  We managed to score some points but fell over and bent some peices when we tried to fold the arm up.  During the testing we realized the tubes were slipping and came up with an alternate design that used stand-offs and C channel to replace it.  We finished rebuilding the drive train for the first stage of the arm with this design (though we had to take the arms off again); We did not have time to replace the tube on the second stage of the arm, though we started and decided to reduce the gearing to 6:1 from 4:1.

Penelope spent most of the day helping 267 work on their bot because they only had one team member at the scrimmage today.

We got the servos for the dump bed all wired up today and they work great.  we added a fourth servo recently to increase the power of the arm by 1/3. The servos now use three servo ports instead of just two, we had the three dump servos chained with Y cables to one port but were concerned about how much power we would be able to draw from one port.  Now there are two ports that have Y cables for the dump bed, and one that controls the gate.

Meeting 2-3-09

Blog

Jared K.

Tucker B.

Penelope B.

Ian M.

Jared: I went with John to get a new plug cut but when we went in to the construction shop none of the band saws had a metal-cutting blade on them. So when we went to the band room to get Mr. Cluton, he was busy.

Meeting 1-27-09

Jared K.

Kevin B.

Ian M.

Penelope B.

Our robots name is Z.O.D. Zamboni Of Doom and our team name is Axils of Evil

Jared Kent: The tubes are very thin and when too much torque is put on them they come out of the split clamps and become deformed. The solution was that we machined plugs on a lathe that fit in the ends of the tubes to reinforce them. See ajacent pictures.

I also put the spacers on the screws holding up one of the touch sencors, but the sencor was crooked so Ian replaced one of the tetrix pieces and i put the entire thing on again. Kevin had me replace the axel of the second arm stage manipulator and the L-shaped pieces of metal.

Penelope Biggs: the front bumper was uneven and not lining up. so we got a peice of flat bar and cut it to the right lenth. then we used a drill bit to drill some custom holes so they would line up with the touch sensor holes. so now we have a bumper that works. 

Kevin Burns: As we continued to dissasembled the robot to repair bent axles and add the tube plugs we found that we have damaged many of the splint clamps. These clamps have been slipping, which was caused by the bending of the prongs. This is caused when a clamp is tightened while tighted to another parts. We have found that the split clamps are not very good at holding on to axles.

Meeting 1-16-09

Meeting 1/16/09

Attendance: Kevin Burns, Ian Mcbride, Tucker Brennan, Penelopy 

Agenda:

Make the gate

add motor encoders to the drive wheels

blog

Kevin: I help Ian design, draw, and cut the gate for the bucket. Later we found out that the bucket servos were not zeroed properly and that they could not lift a bucket with more than one puck in it. We were able to mount the gate and it worked fine. 

Ian: I worked on designing and building the gate.

posted by ian mcbride at 7:42 pm 0 comments  

Meeting 12/27/08

Attendence: Ian, Tucker

Agenda:

re-mount touch sensors

adjust the mount for the beam the second stage of the arm rests on

create bumpers for the rear touch sensors

What happened:

 We mounted the rear touch sensors further in the C channel and used some plates loosly screwed into the frame to create bumpers. We need to get and use a little lock tight to keep the nuts from falling off. We re-wired the touch sensors.

-Ian

Meeting 1-1-09

Attendance: Ian McBride, Kevin Burns

Agenda:

stabilize motor

make a prototype of the dumper

mount servos to dump the bucket

What happened:

We started by straping the motor to the frame to stop it from flexing.  Then we decided where we could mount brackets for the servos so the weight of the bin will be supported.  We drew plans for our current design of the bin, and then cut it out as an example.  We realized that it may not reach quite far enough, so we are making a gate with a serveo that will drop to let pucks roll out of the bucket.

Friday 12/16/08

Attendance: Ian, Keegan, Penelope, Nick, Kevin, Jarred

Agenda:

• Replace the motor for the second stage of the arm
• Replace beta wheels with legal ones

Kevin: I worked with Penelope to replace the upper arm motor and mounted the new motor controller.

Penelope: helped Kevin to replace the upper arm motor. We also mounted the new motor controller, replaced the illegal “beta” middle wheals with the new ones, and put Velcro on the back of the NXT for mounting. 

Keegan: tightened bolts.

Penelope: Watched Ian work on the programming for the LEDs, and learned a bit about how the LED program works.

Nick: re-made prototype scoop for robot added taller sides and shortened the floor area as well as in creasing the scoops incline.