Written by: Medha G, Dylan C, Charlotte S, Ben R, Dylan L
Monday 1/22
BAM BAM BAM BAM, that is how open room today started. This was the sound of a few students trying to hammer hex shafts into wheels to broaden the hole. Even though that wasn’t the most exciting part of the open room, it became a thing that people were interested in doing. 5 freshmen huddled around a hammer, some hex shaft, and a wheel to try and hammer it in as far as possible, like a show of strength. It was fun to watch.
While this was going on, Riley, Timothy, and a few others were working on building the shooter for our robot. As they were building, Timothy told us how he would “Rather work with too loose than not loose enough.” as attempting to try to screw things into the robot. This has been in the building stages for a while, and every day the shooter gets better. It will be exciting to see the finished product at our first competition!
On Monday, Nolan, one of our business captains continued to work on our scouting app. The goal of this is to help us determine strategy with alliances and who we could partner with if we end up getting to choose our alliances during our competition. By allowing us to observe and log information about other teams we are competing with we can be better informed during alliance selection. Nolan gets a little farther in his progress every day. Everyone is excited to see the finished product!
Tuesday 1/23
Tuesday means the team gets to have yet another fundraising meeting. At the meeting, the team discussed an exciting prospect, a possible Chipotle fundraiser! The team hashed out details about planning and promoting the event and then they moved on to a main priority of the meeting, which was our Culver’s fundraising event. The meeting ended after they discussed providing coffee bean concessions at various events.
In Open Room, the team had many teaching moments throughout the room, with many members learning how to use various machinery. Talon also made major improvements to our robot. The majority of which are improvements to the frame of the robot. By the end of Tuesday, the frame of the robot was about 95% done. Talon only needs to attach the swerve drive to finish its construction.
Tuesday ended with our team meeting. Being such an important topic inside our team, Talon had guest speakers from NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) to speak about mental health. Talon reflected on mental health, expanding and destigmatizing our view on mental health as a team. At the end of the presentation, we got great snacks!
Wednesday 1/24
Today was a busy-slow day, filled with meetings, intake making, and speedy swerve chassis making. For Media, our members worked on Impact, along with updating our social media and website. At the end of their meeting, the website was mostly up to date, great job Media!
For the open room, It was really all hands on deck for the intake building. Riley was frantically adding pieces to the intake while 3 others were holding it. As said by Ally, “Am I being useful, Riley? Oh, I am? Woohoo!” The open room was filled with teaching members useful skills, like building gearboxes and assembling subsystems by following the CAD.
After Media, the Awards meeting started focusing on proofreading the Woodie Flowers and Impact Essays. Afterward, Nolan requested that the build side make a new swerve chassis for our programming subteam. Just a few hours before the open room ended. So, our team scrambled to make it, before the room closed. Luckily, they finished just in time, meaning that the programming team has a brand new programming chassis!
Thursday 1/25
The programming team met for a short period on Thursday. They mainly worked on the robot’s vision elements as they assembled a makeshift processing unit to test out code on our team’s TV. They also discussed a plan for working on the robot’s autos. Thursday ended the second programming, and everyone enjoyed yet another off day.
Friday 1/26
Word of the day, CNC. So much CNCing happened today, with Ally L. and Audrey T. taking the lead, and learning how to work the machine. Today was a much slower day for the team, with only a few members working on the district’s day off. We worked on yet another intake iteration, as one of our team members accidentally caded the robot so that the two pieces were overlapping, whoops! As Ally L. said “The motor and the belt decided not to be friends 🙁” However, they are working around it, CNCing new parts. The open room was a slow day, but we got a lot of CNCing done!
Talon also had an Outreach meeting, where our team talked about new possible events, such as a possible gaming fundraiser and other collaborations with our school district. Lots of good stuff is to come.
Saturday 1/27
Intake done! Riley and Timothy worked hard to complete the robot’s intake. Ben R had an exceptional educational experience in being approved for drilling by Timothy. The day’s assembly went pretty smoothly, but since there was a shortage of people it went pretty slow for the total progress of the day. according to Ben, Timothy was powered by cheese and caramel popcorn, of which he ate all the cheese first and saved the caramel for last. Then came testing and after some trial and error we finished our mission leaving us some time for discussion on how the team can improve on outreach.
Sunday 1/28
Just like rocky training for the boxing championship, we got to work and continued to get strong. Sunday’s room was pretty empty in terms of people, but the few who showed up worked extremely hard. The room started with the complete removal of wires from last year’s robot, after that we used the majority of those wires and attached them our this year’s robot. After listening to some classic Rock and Roll, two of our great mentors visited the room with the final part of the field that they constructed. After a somewhat brief attempt at assembling the stage, we put it away and got back to work. The rest of the room saw the testing of the swerve chassis and our robot’s shooter. The highlight of the room came towards the end when we got word of our Kraken motors finally being shipped. Hopefully, by the end of next week, we will be able to finally assemble our robot’s frame.
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