End of Week 9

What to aspect next week

• Pick our groups for the next challenge
• Take apart everything except the base of the robot
• Aim to finish the robot for the Nov. 3 challenge
• Come up with a design for Dec. 9th challenge

These next couple of weeks are going to extremely busy because we have limited time to come up with a design for a robot that has to pick up balls and place them in a specific area. Several ideas have been discussed but we haven't been able to come up with a solid idea yet.We know that we want to use the base of our old robot, so we began taking out all the extra components and left the basics.

Results of the tug-a-war Challenge

We lost because:

• The axles kept coming out of the motors
• The gears still weren't aligned
• Bad communication amongst the team members

Although we were able to finish our solidworks build successfully, the lack of attention toward our robot proved to be disastrous in the end.  We were not able to get all of the gears in place or align them, causing them to slide as the robot moved. Also, the axles were not secure in the motors, causing one side of the robot to completely stop moving during the competition. Lastly, bad communication about ideas to improve the robot during the competition lead to our robot being prematurely thrown into a match, resulting in a fast victory for the other team. Overall, we learned communication is key and contributions from everyone is the only way to succeed.

Start of week 9

Goals for this week:

• Put the gears back on the robot
• Test out the robot and discover why the right side wont move forward
• Win a match against another bot

Tomorrow is our last chance at redeeming ourselves in this competition. We haven't won a match in the last two competitions. We learned from our mistakes that 1) our gears weren't aligned 2) one side of the robot was unable to move forward, only backward 3) many screws and gears were lose. We have been working hard to make adjustments and we hope we will be successful.

End of Week 8

What we didnt accomplish

• Finish solidworks
• Fixing the gear ratio
• Creating a working robot

Although we worked diligently, we were not able to finish the robot in time for the competition. The competition was a failure. Next week, we have a chance to redeem ourselves. We did not finish the solidworks and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Time management is something we lacked. We will try to make improvements so we can be successful next week. Overall, this was a learning experience. It also helped improve our solidworks skills, slightly. Building the robot, overall was fun, we all just wish the end result would've been different.

The Middle of Week 8

End the winner of the tug-a-war challenge is:

• Not us
• Our biggest set back was our gears

This week we challenged the other robots in tug of war. We placed at the bottom of the bracket. We might not have won, but we created a working robot, for the most part, and we are happy that the robot was able to move. Our biggest problem was that we did not make sure the gears we secured. Because of this, our robot was basically falling apart while it was tugging. In the future, we have to make sure we have the correct gear ratio for the event we are doing. We also need to make sure all of the screws are on tight. Lastly, we need to make sure that the controller is working properly.

Start of week 8

Goals for this week:

• Finish the robot
• Finish solidworks
• Test out the robot

We have encountered several obstacles these past few weeks. Building is such a tedious task that has several variables to account for. It is extremely frustrating, but we are pushing through it. We hope that we can finish the robot in time for the competition, but we aren't so sure at this point. We are hoping for the best, but prepared for anything.

End of week 7*

What we accomplished:

• Changed the gear ratio.

Although we changed the gear ratio for the robot, we are unfortunately still having issues. We know that there is no excuse for this, but the axles are giving us issues. They keep sliding out of the motor when they turn. Some of the gears are not turning and we still haven't made progress with solid works.