Today marked the close of week 5 of the build season. At the time of writing we have 7 days, 3 hours, 7 minutes, and 13 seconds to go. It's crunch time for Team 3245. One of our objectives this year, as we often set most years, is to have our competition robot done by this time of the build season. This allows time for driver practice, refining mechanisms, perfecting our "sweet spot" (where our robot can be on the field and still make the goal), and developing sophisticated autonomous. Needless to day, we did not make this date.

So what do we have right now? We have two robot bases which are built to scale, can drive, have pneumatics, and allow for us to build mechanisms upon. One of these is our competition bot, made of some awesome looking aluminum channel, and which we will be bagging up very soon. The other is our practice bot, which we will continue to work with throughout the season. This will help with driver practice and continuing to develop more mechanisms for the robot. This year we tried something new on our drive base. We are doing "West Coast Drive" (WCD), a system on which the wheels are on the outside of the robot, rather than being sandwiched between two metal plates. This allows for a wider stance, a narrower drive chain assembly, and easier wheel replacement. Its a good thing we chose WCD, because it not only does the driving look awesome (many thanks to our driver George), but it also looks like the intense driving will require a lot of wheel changes this year.

So what are we working on right now? Sadly the game is not just driving around. We need a shooter, a floor loader, a catcher, and hopefully a way to not only shoot into the high goal, but a way to shoot to ourselves. That sounds weird, a way to shoot to ourselves? Yep, it would be amazing in Utah if we were able to cross the field, including drive under the metal truss that spans the field at 5'2" tall, and still earn the "truss shot" points - awarded for shooting a ball over the truss. But to do this "truss shot" we don't really want to shoot it across and then go chase down the ball to control it again. Imagine if we could drive under the truss while the ball flies over the truss, and then have it land back in our robot!

Alright enough with what we could be working on. This week we split up into two groups, the Veterans and the Rookies. Each group is building their own robot, for which they will earn a grade toward their final in the Robotics Class. Doing this allows for more students to benefit from hands on learning and experience. This also gives us two robots with which to practice after stop-build day.

So what are the plans for our competition bot? Right now we are working on the shooter, as we aren't much help without the ability to score goals. Our schedule looks as follows:
- Tuesday, Feb 11: Shooter Motors Attached, Shooter Mounted, Pneumatics Completed, UpperLid Attached, PracticeBot Reassembled.
- Wednesday, Feb 12: Floor Loader Started, Exploration into Rotating Wheeled Shooter.
- Thursday, Feb 13: Bumpers Constructed, Floor Loader Motorized.
- Friday, Feb 14: Floor Loader Mounted, Bumpers Attached, Start Decorations

We are also pursuing the "Chairmans Award" this year. This is a first for our team, but gives us a greater chance to receiving recognition at our Regional Events, as well as increases our chances of making it to Championships!

I hope to see everyone at robotics this upcoming week. Hopefully there is a lot coming together and quickly! I'm looking forward to a great competition season!

-Harris Christiansen
frc@harrischristiansen.com

Hello, this is Ryan and I will be updating you on week five.

This monday was our supposed "stop build day" and afterwords we would use the two weeks till the actual stop build day to refine, tweak, and practice with our robot so we can be the best that we can be in the Utah competition. So unfortunately we were not able to finnish up a robot that we see fit to compete. As you know we are using the WCD for our frame, but we wanted some way to make it lighter so me and some other students spend hours over the drill press drilling 1" holes into the frame this makes it about 70g lighter then without the holes. We were able to create the drive train for our comp bot (name pending), and I installed some cam's onto the frame to be able to adjust the chain after it will loosen through all the erratic driving George does. The shooter is also built and now we are just trying to find ways to mount it to the robot and weather we want it to be adjustable so we can shoot from multiple angles or stationary so we know where each shot will be fired without trying to adjust ourselves.

We split up into two groups, the rookies and the veterans, with the final exam practical. Each group will have to create a working robot by Feb 17, we will both be scored depending on how well our robots preform. We get extra points for doing things like CADing our robot design and putting LED's on the frame. Whichever team scores the most points wins! The rookies of course have lenience and are not scored as harshly as the veterans. Hopefully we can finnish both of our robots before the stop build day which will be 7 Days 11 Hours 57 Minutes and 34 Seconds from when this is posted

-Ryan Outtrim

Ok so this week I have most recently been working on the electronics team. Rather than create an entirely new electrical system for the game bot we decide to strip Shifty for parts. It was rather strange as once taken off the robot the system seemed akin to that of an organic circulatory system, a fact which I found most interesting. as weel as stripping Shifty for parts I learned how to use gear ratios something which I now feel I understand far better not only mathematically but mechanically. As well as these two I helped work on the wheeled shooter a project which I think holds great potential, despite the current flaws in range and design mainly due to human error something that I sadly am quite sure I contributed to. Other than that it seems that so far we have met our goals of driving and are well on our way to being ready at least somewhat for Utah despite recurring setbacks. other than that most things seem to be going well and although cad has faded somewhat from use I feel that most people on the team have a good understanding of what they are doing. All in all I feel that this has been a good week, and that we have made great progress in our endeavors to have a robot ready for stop build day.
-Connor Scott