Plainly Iron: bi-weekly blog Issue II

These past three days, January 14-16th, the Plainsmen Robotics team has shown commitment and dedication to their week one preparations for this year's competition, REBUILT! The team has finalized the plan for the game and outlined the priorities for the build season. Overall, this week has been full of productivity and teamwork.

On Wednesday, the team worked with incredible diligence and completely assembled both the drive frame and the build frame. These frames are the backbone of the robot's structure and functionality, and the progress the team made on the frames is astounding. Additionally, the team invested time towards finishing the setup for the practice field.

On Thursday, the team maintained this momentum in their work effort. A great focus was applied towards the wiring of our drive bases, as well as other preparations for our programmers. Completing the drive train accomplishes the first goal of our priority list of being able to have our robot move. There was also some driver practice done with the practice robot; however, there is still no certainty in who our drivers will be this year. Finally, the team completed their rules test, ensuring that all members knew the important components of the game.

Finally, today, January 16th, a great deal of progress was made on CAD designs, with the most major designs being completed. Next, the team decided on a button design for this year and began preliminary work for making buttons, which will start next week. Furthermore, progress on wiring management for the build frame and programming for the controller was made in strides. The team started on the CAD of the climber, and a prototype is being developed.

The Plainsmen Robotics team, across the various facets of work that go into building a robot, has planned and worked persistently over the last week. The team looks forward to putting just as much effort in next week! Finally, a huge thank you to Coach Glover from One Off Custom Fabrication for cutting out the brackets!