Thursday, January 14. 2010
The evening started with an Integration Meeting. These short meetings are held 3 times a week to make sure that all the sub-teams are progressing, communicating and, well, integrating with one another. Some of the brief comments from this meeting (Thanks Mike Mo): mechanical is still early in the design process, programming has some ideas and needs input from the strategy team, the controls sub-team has been looking at buttons but also needs some input from programming, electrical has been playing with Rofl-bot starting to select motors, drive train design is being tweaked.
On to dinner! What we ate! Dinner was provided by Supermom Val (aka Calvin’s Mom) and was crock-pot shell (pasta) stroganoff. She made a vegetarian version as well. It was served with salad, bread and butter, brownies and Clementines. Fresh fruit! Yay!
Thursday is Safety Talk night! Mike H. (reigning Safety Captain) gave tonight’s talk on personal protective equipment (PPE). We discussed the importance of safety glasses (required in the shop!), gloves, hearing protection and machine guarding. Safety is everyone’s responsibility!
Where’s Larry?! To be in touch of the pulse of the team, I’m following our Lead Mentor / Team Leader, Larry, around tonight.
6:35 – Larry is meeting with the combined strategy and programming sub-teams to discuss autonomous modes (hey, that was a request during the integration meeting!) I tried to be a fly on the wall but all I could hear over the drone of the asbestos air sampling pump (school construction still ongoing) were phrases like…primary strategy…secondary strategy…coopertition seeding… significant challenge…
7:05 – Larry has now joined the mechanical sub-team which is testing various mechanisms for moving the ball and supporting a lifted robot. Looks like the mentors cleaned out their garages!
7:30 – Larry stops to check on Leann as she is entering the input from the Chairman’s surveys. She was almost done and said that the team wrote down a lot of great ideas! Moving on, Larry strolls to look at the current drive train CAD (computer-aided design).
7:40 – Larry is now with the electrical / controls / programming groups where they are discussing the different parts of the control box. The most important consideration for 2010? Make the control box weigh less than last year!
7:45 – Larry took a quick trip downstairs to the field / crate sub-team where he found them demonstrating the exemplary use of personal protective equipment.
8:00 – Larry is shopping for fasteners with Alex R. and Mentor Josh on the McMaster Carr site.
8:10 – Larry takes a few minutes for a question on button designs from the flare sub-team. They are ready to make something different! Meanwhile Matt and Ben are showing off an awesome button design while they are waiting for parts to arrive to build the drive-train. Sounds like good timing to me!
8:20 – The crowd is thinning out as Larry is talking to Mentor Tom K. Based on the hand and arm motions, it looks like they are talking about hanging mechanisms.
8:40 – Larry has made his way back into the shop where the programming team has successfully gotten the camera and the program to recognize the full-scale Breakaway vision target.
8:45 – A new mentor (maybe) has arrived! Larry is doing a sales job on our team and giving a shop tour to Eric Metzler. Larry is offering him a signing bonus. Will he bite?
9:00 – A commotion in the shop! Larry is still on the shop tour when the mechanical team tests a prototype kicker made out of pieces of our cart. They took apart the cart?!? Oh, my! But look at that kick! Hey Kim! Videos should be uploaded tonight!
9:15 – Larry is still going, but this blogger needs to finish for the night!
Reminder! There are no meetings on Fridays! See you Saturday!
Oh wait! Fun Team Member Fact! Kevin (new team member) on the controls sub-team carries black duct tape with him! Just in case! It came in handy tonight!
