Week 5

The robot was made over both aesthetically, and we managed to help it shed a few pounds.

Building the Robot - February 2, 4, 6, and 7, 2009

Af Robot weighed in at most 100 pounds. We had never had to deal with this predicament. That is what We started off the week learning that our robot was at least 15 pounds over weight. We were both saddened by this an surprised. Saddened for obvious reasons, but surprised because last year mentors are for though, right? They introduced us to the method of cheese holing. This method was used on the back sheet of lexan, the gear boxes, and the table plates for both the control board and the shooters' board. This took off a good amount of weight, but we still weren't under 120 pounds. So, we took out all of the bolts that we could, and riveted the places where they came out of. Additionally, we took the lexan panels off of the top and sides, and in place of these panels, we used couch liner. We riveted that in too, and edged it with aluminum angle.

Making the robot was easier with all of the pieces off. We were able to take apart the shooters and spray paint them the powder blue that had already covered the drivetrain, and the drivers' station. And, we spray painted the wooden table plate for the shooters a silver color to match the rest of the robot. To make the edges of the couch liner look better, we used black duct tape to edge all of the sides of the robot on the top half.

In addition to working on the robot, we constructed a fueling station for some of the payload specialist candidates to practice throwing the orbit balls over. And, we had time to test the shooters, and collector, to make sure they still worked.

Building Other Robots - February 5-17, 2009

We had a mentor on call for any team that wanted help on their robot in the Houston area. As it came to crunch time for the robotics season, he helped more and more teams. In the fifth week of the build season, he helped 2956 Energized for STEM Academy Robotics, and 1484 Hoggzilla with their robots. He could give them total attention, and not worry about his team because we knew what to do next. He made sure that their robot fit within legal dimensions, and made sure that they had needed pieces on their robot such as a trailer hitch. Also, he helped fix some of their problems that they still needed to work out with their robots.

Go to week 4 - Return to the 2009 build page - Go to week 6