Testing

At about 2:30 am this morning the new stronger replacement transmission was completed. Many hours of hard work after a devastating incident last night that wiped out the previous gearbox. (Weren't no sounds of silence when the teeth on two aluminum gears used in the lifting mechanism folded over!) The new transmission out-performs the old one by a whole bunch.

There is still some minor work to be done on the robot prior to placing it in the crate, This will all get finished later today so its ready for the Feb. 23 ship date.

Tonight we discussed some spirit ideas (hats, mostly) and then broke off into groups. We also talked about visiting South Portland High this weekend to practice in their arena.
After we dispursed into groups. Ronnie and Mike "finished up" the lifting arm, and it was attached and (much later) tested. Finally. :-)
As it turns out, we only had one motor hooked up, so it wasn't working at first. But later we found the problem and plugged in the second motor. It was really something to see that robot completely lift off the ground.

Josiah and the team test the camera's target-acquisition abilities.

Almost all the way there. The mechanism is now strong enough to lift the robot with only the help of one finger.

Testing the kicker shows some problems with high-speed kicks and the soccer ball impacting the temporary bumpers (the real ones are being painted this day), due to the kick going up too much. But with the real bumpers, later on, the kicker continues to perform well.

Did the robot come in under the max allowable weight of 120 lbs in its near-final weigh-in on February 14th? Watch and see!

It's almost there... just a couple more tweaks and it'll be working like a charm!

Also includes instruction for the team members who will have to remove the robot after it has lifted itself.

We just can't get enough of that kicking spinner!