Written By: Dylan C, Medha G.
Monday 1/15
Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! For Talon the team decided that we needed another room, so instead of taking the day off, we used Monday as a way to cut plates on our CNC machine. The team listened to music and we got to eat a fancy home-cooked dinner by our mentor Maddie S. The mac and cheese was exquisite. Plates were cut and we got stuff done.
Tuesday 1/16
Though our last open room was slow, that was not at all the case today. As soon as the room started, high school students were scrambling to get our large to-do list done. One big thing we did in the open room was disassembling. With a bittersweet goodbye to our past season’s accomplishments, piece by piece, we disassembled. 😢
Also, our last open room was spent designing parts, we started printing and cutting them out. Timothy M., our lead of manufacturing was asked, “What are you CNCing?” His response “CNCing anything that is made out of quarter-inch aluminum.”
Subteam Fun
Today, we also had a meeting for Talon Girls Initiative, led by Eleanor G. It is a sub-team dedicated to creating new and exciting ways to get girls more on our team. At the meeting, an exciting project was put underway, and something to look forward to next month.
Another sub-team meeting that took place was the Fundraising. We started to discuss and plan a few different fundraisers, partnering with a lot of businesses in the EP area. These fundraisers also allow people on robotics to meet people in our community.
Finally, our team met for yet another amazing team meeting. While slightly longer than usual, the team meeting was quite productive. Our captains started off the presentation with the voting process for the team’s Woodie Flowers Nomination and the name of this year’s robot. After that, the evening concluded with the reading of the awesome sauce and a great presentation of the robot CAD to the team. 10/10 would team again.
Wednesday 1/17
Once again, today was another busy day with all hands on deck. Right after the school day, all of our team members rushed to get everything disassembled. Our CNC was working away, making the room a delightful place to be in. Along with that, the programming side started working on detecting opposing robots or “Enemies” as Anish would say.
Wednesday seems to be a very popular day for subteams to meet, as we had three today. The first meeting for today was the Media meeting. This consisted of brainstorming about new ideas for social media, and adding more to our team website. Make sure to stay tuned for that! Next was our Awards meeting, with Scouting and Strategy at the same time. Awards consisted of writing the Woodie Flowers nomination and finalizing the Impact Award essay. Warren also brought cookies, so big thanks to him!
Finally, Scouting and Strategy worked on talking about, well, strategy. Our team had a long discussion about what we are going to look for in other teams. We also worked on making a list of what we want our new app for scouting to look like, and the main functions. Nyel stated, “I want to be an iPad kid.”
Friday 1/19
With Thursday being a day off for the team. Friday’s open room was the busiest one yet. Everyone was running around, building the robot one little piece at a time. One such group was Ally L. Charlotte S., Audrey T. and Laviki P., who scrambled and ended up finishing our climber, which warranted much celebration from the team. We also had Timothy M., our manufacturing lead, working the CNC virtually the whole open room. When asked what he was making, he very descriptively replied “Things… for… things…”. As Timothy was CNCing things, Gabe B. and Dylan D. were assembling the shooter for our robot.
We were also very excited today because our old captain, Neel S. was here to visit the room! We were all very excited to see him again, and the new members of the team were very excited to meet the famous old captain. Of all the great things he did in the room, he gave one of our business captains, Dylan C., a brand new hairstyle- a mohawk. Even though his hairstylist skills may not be as refined, it was awesome to have a friend come visit the room, and someone who knows what he’s doing helping to handle the build process during the season. On the topic of the season, Nolan P., one of our business captains, was creating our new scouting app, after spending a long time brainstorming how to scout this season (with our scouting lead Vonnie D.) We all had a busy productive open room, and are excited to see what the rest of the build season looks like for us.
Saturday-Sunday 1/20 – 1/21
With our new parts from CEM in, the frame was slowly being assembled, and the chassis of the robot was starting to take shape. Saturday and Sunday were very productive as all parts that the team could properly make in-house were finally done. The worst part of robotics started over the weekend for the team, The waiting period. Fancy new parts are to come, and because of this, we were unable to continue the build of the robot after, the main part of the frame was completed. Ideally, the team will continue work when our new fancy Krakens arrive. Unfortanly for you, the robot is a secret! No fancy picture.
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