Hello everyone, we’re back for another week! The build team is continuing the chassis assembly and has finally managed to lubricate the gears. The lubricant, as has been explained to me in detail, is almost literally impossible to get out of clothes, and difficult to wash off of skin. As such, everyone is wearing gloves, and I’ve been told that I’m not allowed to go near the chassis until further notice. While the gears are being lubricated, the rest of the team has begun the process of assembling the rest of the machinery. As of my writing this, we’ve just begun to attach motors to the chassis. Eventually, these motors will be able to turn the robot, control its direction, and, with a little luck, control the new mecanum wheels. These wheels, which some of you may remember being a hotly debated proposal last year, have dozens of smaller wheels instead of tires, allowing them to turn towards each other and cause the robot to move sideways. That said, this isn’t something we’ve ever done before, so getting them up and running is going to be a challenge.
The mecanum wheels, three of which are visible here, have specially angled wheels attached to them, which, when angled properly, can move the robot sideways without turning 
Omni wheels (pictured here on last year’s robot) have historically been staples of our robots, and also sport smaller wheels on their sides. This enables much smoother turns
The programming team has begun to test code on our older robots. Since the code we’re working on at present is designed to apply to all of our future robots anyway, there’s no need to tailor it to one robot or another. As a result, using two of our old robots to test it is potentially even more helpful than using the new one. Given that the new one barely has motors attached, this arrangement works out pretty well.
Duckbot, our robot from two years ago, is being called out of retirement for testing Last year’s robot, Ben Swolo, ready and waiting
Lastly, the business team is continuing on with sponsor updates and has started some organization in the less used areas of the workspace. This project is likely going to be enough to occupy the business team in its current capacity (now that the award applications are in, most of the team is working full time for build or programming), and as a result, the next few updates will likely have a much shorter section on the business team. There will definitely be more active once the next season starts, but for now, we’ll be focusing much on the team’s progress with the robot.
That’s just about everything for today! Once again, thank you for reading the blog, and feel free to contact us at thewireclippers5902@gmail.com; we love to hear from you. Otherwise, thank you for your continued support, and we’ll see you soon!
