This past week we started figuring out what will work the best in this new challenge. This can be quite a chaotic process, but what is great about this, is that we learn... Most teams have students specialized in what they do best. But I honestly just love how our team works. We divide into separate groups and either research about West Coast driving or prototyping for a catapult or a wheeled shooter. But after a few hours of intense work, we come together as a team for lunch. We talk about what we did, what worked and what did not. Instead of one person knowing one thing. We take time to learn from each other and make sure that everyone knows everything about the robot that we are building . Last year, during regionals and sometimes during the championship in St Louis, I would walk around and see either a coach in charge of PR or a coach will step in to talk about the robot. We want to make sure that everyone on our team knows everything so anyone can speak about how are robot was designed and built. Another thing that I think is really important, is how we integrate rookie students to have an important role in this year's challenge. We don't want to push them out of our way and disregard their ideas. We want new minds to look at it in a different perspective. We don't just make them do the dirty work for us. As a matter of fact, I'm a veteran and the past few days I have been partly focused on cleaning that cold saw. Everybody does their part.

This past long weekend, we have made huge progress in completing prototypes for our shooter. We have it down to two ideas: a catapult or a wheeled shooter, and we have had a lot of success on both. What I think is also great, is that we have helped Brighton's rookie team , 5159 to figure out this year's challenge.

Personally, I've always been for Team catapult. I do believe that it is more complex, but I feel that it has great potential. What I've been trying to figure out this past weekend, is how to pull back the catapult arm with some sort of ratcheting system to hold it in place while the motor is off. First, I thought about getting a vex pro 2 cim 2 speed gearbox. And being the gearbox guru that I am, I decided to jump forward to the task. I took apart the whole gearbox and tried to find a way to incorporate a ratchet inside of it and also take out the high gear, add a neutral spot so when we shift the pneumatic gears, the ratchet will push over causing the gears inside to freely spin. Now this idea ended up not working, and people on chief Delphi have already beat me to the task. But that's what it's all about right? To learn from your mistakes.



Another way to bring the catapult arm down, is to get something like a boat crank and crank the arm down, and using a servo, push the release mechanism to let the crank spin freely. We have yet to find a way to pull the arm down, but we have made much success with manually pulling it down from the truss and scoring in the high goal. (insert facebook video of catapult scoring)
These past couple of weeks have been both great and stressful,but I am excited to see the outcome and I wish everyone the best!

-Reid Nebeker