Good morning everyone,
We reached a major milestone this week: Rev A production. We're continuing to prototype various robot systems, and we're also bearing down on the famed Crunch Weekend.
But first, some important announcements:
To attend our team's Sacramento Regional from March 23-26 at UC Davis, your child will need some paperwork before they can attend competitions. One sheet is online here, and the other two will need to be printed, filled out, and turned into Mr. Roisen's room E-2 during brunch, lunch, or after school. Those two forms are attached. Note that on the medical form, the "blood transfusions" question is asking you to consent to them, not whether your child has had any.
You'll also need a hotel room, which you can reserve according to directions from previous emails. You can check who's already reserved one here. Also, note that students may not drive other students to or from Davis, but they may carpool with parents. Also, if your child intends to attend the competition on Friday, March 24, they will need all of their teachers to sign the back of the permission form, which will excuse their absences.
If you or your student aren't sure about going for financial reasons, you can secure a travel scholarship. Since these competitions are the culmination of months of hard work, we'd love to see all of our students there. If you believe that you will need a scholarship, please contact Mr. Roisen at proisen@seq.org.
If you'd like to donate to the team, we'd be very grateful. For directions on how to make a donation, reference the bottom of this document.
Again, we have a few photo albums: One for kickoff, and another for the rest of this season here.
About the robots:
We finished two design reviews over the past week, one internal design review on Wednesday and another "critical" design review on Saturday. In these, we examined the CAD model of our robot and looked for any errors. We're still mopping up a few issues from the second design review, and we're beginning production of the parts that don't have flaws. We'll continue to prototype while the robot's being built, and add any new ideas onto our "Rev B" robot. After lots of hard work, we finally got a full-size prototype of our arm system running with motors — it waved "hello, world" on Saturday. We also continued prototyping our intake system, which can pick up both cubes and cones.
We'll be producing the parts for our Rev A robot over the next week and a half, which'll bring us up to the first weekend of midwinter break (aka "ski week.") On that weekend, we'll be working on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday too. This weekend has special significance on the robotics team: It's known as "Crunch Weekend," since we won't leave until our Rev A robot is fully machined, assembled, and wired. Crunch Weekend meetings are longer and more intense than average robotics meetings, and usually require all the effort we can get.
Of course, there's no obligation to attend all the days, much less stay for the entire meetings — especially since "Crunch Weekend" meetings regularly run past midnight. Staying even a little bit late on Crunch Weekend is a rite of passage for die-hard robotics students, and most underclassmen tend to peter out within an hour of the typical end time anyways.
What's Next?
Crunch Weekend will be from February 17th to February 20th. We will not have any more meetings for the rest of midwinter break, and our next meeting will be on Monday, February 27. In the meantime, be sure to make the proper arrangements for our competitions, and stay tuned for more cool robot info.
Goodbye, and Sko Bears!
Tommy Knox
Tech President, Team 766
