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1/13/10
The Killer Bees are doing awesome, and we’re having some great fun this year. The robot is coming along great and we’re making progress on our antennae. My experience on the Killer Bees has been amazing, and I have learned a lot this year. There are many different tools, like the lathe, that I have learned how to use. I know that I am using them safely and correctly, because I am learning from the best mentors there are. Jim, Tim, and Isaac, the engineers, are great at communicating with everyone, even the Freshmen who don’t always know what is going on.
GO KILLER BEES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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1/16/10
During kickoff, we watched the kickoff video, then decided on what we thought would be the best strategy for this year’s game, Breakaway. The next day, a bunch of us met at Jim Zondag’s house, along with mentors from the Enginerds, to discuss the rules and strategies. This week, we have spent most of our time drawing on white boards designing a possible robot for what we thought would be the best strategy. When we were not drawing on white boards, we were making LEGO and cardboard mock-ups of parts we dreamed up. Naturally, we think that we have the best strategy and best design idea for it. At least, all of the combined brain power on our team combined has not come up with any better! Time for building!
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A Call For Help!!
2/8/10
We’ve finally depleted our entire stack of napkins, paper plates, cups, and plastic utensils. Somehow, we’ve also managed to exhaust our entire stock of pop, which included about 2 cases of Mountain Dew, at least one case of Pepsi, and lots of Faygo. We’re also low on water bottles and random snacks. I can’t believe that our supplies have disappeared! So now, if you’re bringing in breakfast, lunch, or dinner, please, please, please, bring us any of the things I mentioned. We’ve gone from having way to much, so much so that we ran out of room to put stuff, to having almost nothing. More food and utensils would be greatly appreciated!
2/11/10
Hey everybody, just a quick reminder. We’re having a team picture sometime on Monday, so please remember to bring in a yellow t-shirt and some dark, if not black pants. Also, if you have some extra T-shirts for new team members to wear, bring those because they don’t have their uniforms yet. If you are new to the team, don’t worry. There will be plenty of extra shirts to bring along, you just need some dark pants!
2/15/10
Well the team picture is a complete do over…..Batteries People! However we did a mile worth of walking to Tech Plaza and……..back! Does the words “File Format Unrecognizable” mean anything to anyone???? Do over! Wear your team shirts on Saturday “ Y’ALL.
2/16/10
We have the week off of school for mid-winter break, and past 9:30 on a Tuesday, but we are still at the Chrysler Tech left building this year’s robot. This close to ship day ( well, “bag day”, since we’re in Michigan), it seems like life is only about building robots. To me, it seems like Chrysler’s my second home. Last Saturday, I was here with several other people for 16 hours- 8 A.M. until Midnight! It’s especially odd that we are here, because it’s a Tuesday and normally Tuesday’s are for mentors only. Despite the frequent declarations of “It’ll never work!” and “We’re doomed!” coming from our pessimistic mentors, I feel that we are actually further along on this year’s robot than we were on last year’s robot at this point in the season. Its not very often that we have most of the major components almost built, and almost working, even if they aren’t working on the robot together. And, surprisingly, we have a second robot started, which is currently closer to the actual competition robot then any second robot we have ever built! I think this season will be a successful one, with all the progress we have been making.
2/17/10
Website deadline tomorrow night at 11:59 EST. Lots and lots of work in progress!!
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1/11/10
In order to get our minds working in the engineering mindset before the build season starts, we like to take a few weeks for design challenges. Over the years, these have ranged from building putting rigs to rockets made out of pop bottles and even cars that were powered by mouse traps. This year’s most notable challenge was to create a crane to hoist a cup full of pennies above the table line using only cardboard, pencils, string, and some tape. We (the students) spent roughly an hour designing and building our solutions, which varied from the ramshackle constructions that failed to bear any load to the highly engineered that were only limited by the amount of pennies the cup could hold. The most interesting of these was a crane that used a pack of muffins as counter weight. Oh wait, that was mine… and we won, boo-yah!
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