Picking Up The Slack

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Created on Thursday, 02 February 2012 16:48
Written by Hilary Burrowes

2/1/12

        It has come to the attention of many members of the team that activity has, sadly, started to slowly become stagnant. While the majority of the team's momentum has been maintained, the original force of our 50+ members has started to dwindle. Nevertheless, the wonderful thing about FIRST is that it teaches high school students just how it will work in the real world, unfortunately, less productive periods of a major project are an all to real challenge many engineers must face on a daily basis. However, the slowing of progress was spotted before it became fatal, and our team is quickly recovering! The team has speed back up to full speed, and we're pushing ahead better than ever. 

CAD division designing

The Outreach and Promotion team worked on getting ready for award submissions (which are due by the fifteenth), reviewed the new t-shirt design concepts, and continued with the constant website tweaking. The Business subteam of the team reevaluated our original business plan to stay on track, as well as factored in the individual financial requests and needs of all the different mechanical, electrical, and software teams. The CAD team had a large break-through this meeting, and completed a full AutoDesk® sketch of the teams current shooter! The Elevator team is using their knowledge of trigonometry to max out their mechanism's effectiveness when working with the rest of the robot's devices. The Drive Train team is still making progress, despite having completed the bulk of their work; they have started making this year's bumpers as well as started to plan for the drive base of the team's second practice robot. 

Software division hard at work

As for the Ball Collection team, a mini device is in the works to keep the overall mechanism at a calculated angle for maximum efficiency when collecting game pieces. Currently, the Software team is satisfied with their completed programing structure, and they have also started working with the Electrical team on the robot's upcoming component integration. The Shooter team is starting to work out the math required to have their mechanism mounted on the lazy susan, to ensure maximum scoring capability.

Overall it was a very busy day, and the remaining sixteen days in the build season are sure to be just as productive, after all it is crunch time.