Yes indeed I am back in my native land of Seattle. I’m almost to my house now.
In case you didn’t know, I went to St. Louis for the FIRST world championships. It was great. Unfortunately I left before everything finished because my flight left before everything ended.
As you probably know, I’m in my high school’s robotics club. We participate in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), a competition sponsored by FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, which also holds lower level competitions.
The “Build Season,” when we construct the actual robot, has started. Four teams have been assigned components to complete, with one team integrating the components together, as well as building the basic chassis. Many teams are already jumping onto completing their tasks, and are making good progress to completing our robot.
Something this will accomplish that is very critical is being able to build two robots, and have LOTS of driver practice. Driver practice is critical for success, and the last year, we got next to ZERO driver practice in.
Of course, I can’t reveal details, as it’s top secret, and if other teams were to get in on it, I’d be in real bad trouble, but I can tell you that this reorganization of the club will certainly make our robot a serious contender in the competition.
This isn’t going to be the last time I post about our club, but it’s the first this year.
Today, Maple Valley Days in 2010 wrapped up. Bear Metal, also known as The Tahoma Robotics Club, had the opportunity to participate in the parade for another year, as well as have a booth again.
This year, we brought all three of our remaining robots, Catalyst, Bearenstein, and Odyssey.
Yesterday, Sunday, I got the opportunity to cut out some parts on our nice new mill we got last week. It’s fast.
So far, we’ve been running the mill with just spraying with WD-40 as a coolant, but once we get actual coolant running across the tool, we can cut even faster than with just WD-40.
The hard part of making a drain to recycle the coolant is mostly complete, Mr. Prelesnik, a fabrication mentor put in a drain hole, through the shower vinyl that covers the table the mill rests on.
I’m back home again, after a slightly disappointing Autodesk Oregon Regional. There were some Super Bowl XL like calls, but we did fairly well nonetheless. We lost in the semi-finals to the eventual winning alliance.
We are working on making improvements to our robot, that hopefully will give us a better performance on the field.
I’m in my bed at my hotel, in Portland. Tomorrow starts the practice day for the Autodesk Oregon FRC Regional. We have some work to do on our robot, but we hope to be in practice matches by 13:00 (1:00pm). We brought our CNC mill, so we’ll have peak efficiency and ability.
I’m waiting for the school announcements to end, or mention the competition I’m going to. Oh look, they didn’t mention it. I’m still excited for the competition.
We got a loaner trailer for our stuff, while our own trailer is finished being made and decorated. We were packing it last night, and we must finish that today.
I’ll post from Portland.