Robotics is Recharged Up!

Hey folks! Robotics is back, and the ausTIN CANs are hard at work, both in the shop and online. While the programming, business, and CAD departments are working virtually, the manufacturing department is working in person, and using masks and hand sanitizer to their fullest extent. In order to stay safe in the shop, only a certain amount of students are allowed in at a time, and each student is required to wear a mask. The ausTIN CANs are safely carrying out social distancing, even in their in-person work.

During the first week back to robotics, the manufacturing department discussed shop safety and learned how to use a caliper. They also cleaned and organized the shop, and this week the department trained on the metal lathe and learned the basics of TIG welding. The business department has gotten to work on brainstorming social-distance complying fundraising events, as well as worked on learning how to use graphic design programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator.

The manufacturing and business departments aren’t the only ones working hard, though. The programming department has started learning Java, and are creating example projects to control motors for a climbing subsystem, which they will be testing using the desktop robot simulator. On top of that, the CAD department has been learning Autodesk Fusion 360, where they began with basic sketches and projecting geometry. This week, they’ve moved on to more advanced CAD techniques, such as sketches in 3D space, sweeps, revolves, and using flanges. Go CANs!

The ausTIN CANs are looking forward to the upcoming season. We’ve already starting planning upcoming events and fundraisers, and a parent meeting will be happening on October 21st, Wednesday, at 7pm. We hope to see you all there!

Good Day to be a CAN

Teams 2158C, P, B, D, and E all attended McCallum High School for their Tournament. Team 2158C won 8 of 8 matches in qualifications and went on to win the tournament, as well as Robot Skills Champion and Excellence. Team 2158P qualified for States due to their second place in Robot Skills.

Our VEXU team SUB0, consisting of two of our own mentors, competed last Saturday at the South Texas qualifier. They started the day off strong ranking 1st and finished the day with a match record of 7-1  and trophies for both Tournament Champions and Robot Skills Champions.

Congratulations to team 2158C, 2158P and SUB0 for their wins and all the teams that participated.

Build Season Wrap-Up

Here we are 7 weeks into our build season and not a single thing was done.

Just pulling your tail! We got a robot almost done. Almost every veteran has pointed out that this is the cleanest and best packed robot they’ve made/seen. That’s a great compliment for the CAD team to hear since they’ve spent hours trying to figure out how to package this year’s bot. Because going short was decided to be the best strategy, we now face the challenges to fit every component below the 28” limit of the control panel. Most of the mechanisms are finalized, the shooter is getting fabricated today and our bellypan needs to be adjusted to account for our gearboxes. Other than these adjustments which should be finalized by tonight, everything needs to be assembled!

It’s been a busy time for the team in assembly. If members of CAD, manufacturing and programming are “not busy on a project” they are tasked with parts of assembly. This helps the members be updated on the final robot and not out of the loop. With them having “built” a piece of the robot, no matter what subgroup they are on, they have a piece of the robot that they put together. This way, we have programmers and CAD know the mechanisms they work on, not only the code or design involved in the mechanisms!

We have two weeks left before Del Rio and we are in high gear!

We hope to see y’all there!

CANs VEX Win in Seguin!

FIVE of our VEX teams traveled to Seguin for a tournament on Saturday 1/25/2020. The Southwest Robo Showdown was a fantastic venue and was the setting for some thrilling robot action.

Four of our teams advanced to Semifinals. The first Semifinal was oh so close but 2158P and their alliance partner 83009E lost by 3 points. The second Semifinal had the 2158R/2158K alliance facing the alliance with 2158C and 11495B. That match was tied and went to a dramatic rematch where R/K won. In the Final match, the CANs alliance faced the host team alliance, 78155D and 78155C. The Seguin teams started out strong with an autonomous win, but the CANs fought hard and emerged with a 50-46 win for the Tournament Champions trophy.

David, Gretchen, Mauricio, and Eric with the Tournament Champions trophies

2158K also took home the Skills trophy.

Congratulations to all the teams involved, as the tournament was one of great fun and sportsmanship. Looking forward to seeing several of you at the Regional Championship coming up fast!

VEX at MMS Tournament 1.11.20

Murchison Middle School (MMS) is in Anderson High’s vertical team, and their VEX program is where most of our students got their start in robotics. So when they asked us for help in running their hosted tournament, of COURSE we said yes!

Current and alumni members of the ausTIN CANs served in multiple roles, including set up crew, inspection, Skills field manager, the entire referee crew, and clean up. Oh, yeah. We also had 6 VEX teams competing!

It was a long day but worthwhile. Photos below!

This cube counts for style points only!

2158K wins the Skills Champion trophy, presented by Ben Cochran (VEX alum and current FRC member). K was undefeated until the Final, when they lost by ONE POINT. An exciting finish to a long day!

Early morning finishing touches on Set Up. Friday night set up plans were disrupted by a severe weather threat and dedicated teachers/ students arrived at 5 am to prep for doors opening at 7 am Saturday.

As close to a group photo as possible. Prepping for Elimination rounds!

That purple cube landed in the tower at the last second to win this round!

Great to see this wall of Yellow. Alliance partners for Eliminations.

Robot makes stack, then turns unexpectedly such that it knocks over the same stack. Lifeguard chair referee narrowly misses flying cubes, and Head Ref reaction is priceless. (Photographer was intending to simply take a photo of the alliance partners.) :-)

Kickoff to a Great Start!

Kickoff!!

It’s finally here! The day started, like most other teams, with the Rules. How exciting! We were broken up in groups of 4 students and 2 mentors to read the rules. It lasted a bit long but ended just in time for lunch. After lunch, we reconvened to have one member of each group present the groups "5 Takeaways”. A bit was talked about here with things that changed this year compared to previous years. After this, a scoring analysis and objectives list was discussed. Breaking the game objectives into how many points will be gained helped us decide the route we wished to take. During this time, we had also realized that there were plenty of big question marks. The students were split into prototyping groups to get started on the next morning.

Sunday

The first Sunday started pretty strong. Prototyping began and we quickly made a flywheel shooter and a roller intake. We noticed areas that could be improved and quickly iterated these changes. This is the first time in our history where multiple prototypes were on their second or third iteration on the second day of Kickoff. The climber was harder than expected, so we needed more time in the design stage! While these mechanisms were being tested, the CAD team quickly began their work to make a drivebase. By the end of the meeting, two drive rails were ready to be used.

Tuesday

This year, we do not have meetings on Monday or Friday so our next meeting day was Tuesday. During this time, Chairman’s team quickly dove into work creating a near-final outline of the essay. Our programming team drew out a diagram of the subsystems that might appear on the final robot. We talked about the goals for programming, and tasks that need to be done. The programming team is also working on a way to test each subsystem to ensure that everything is in working order before each match. The CAD team was well on the way of finalizing their drive base, little tweaks aside. The next challenge is to figure a way to hold 5 balls in our bot in one go. After throwing 10 ideas around, 4 stuck to the ceiling and neither came back down.

Wednesday

It’s that time of the week! Priority List! We had a total of 12 items on our list, but if only the first 6 are done by our first competition in Del Rio, we are content. We believe these 6 are valuable enough to help us do well at our first event. We decided a stretch goal would be achieving the first 9.

By Wednesday, more Ri3D teams have uploaded their reveal videos and many of these teams have warned about the game pieces. Once two or more power cells are held together in the intake, they are prone to jamming up against each other.

Thursday

This was a part-packed day! Field elements were being popped out of our new router faster than we can assemble. The Generator Switch is halfway done and we still have a pile of parts needing assembly. For manufacturing, the pressure has started. With the remaining drive rails, mistakes were made and lessons were learned. After these parts are completed, more parts need to be pushed from CAD to the manufacturing team. Due to autonomous being back this year, the programming team is excited! Tuesday next week we will be having autonomous palooza, where we brainstorm all the different autonomous modes we might need. CAD has pushed through a lot this year and we are incredibly proud of our students. The communication between CAD and our prototyping groups has allowed our CAD members to alter the sketches as prototyping realizes improvements. This is the first year where we will have custom gearbox plates and we can’t wait!

This weekend the ausTIN CANs are hosting the Anderson HS Qualifier for FLL, and helping out at Murchison Vex tournament. It will be a stretch on the students of the team but I am positive we will make it work!