Author: Nick Dahlen

Despite being midway through finals week at school, we’re still going strong here at the Wire Clippers. Build team continued construction on the new robot’s chassis, having added on the omni wheels. We’re also beginning to build the frame, constructing and planned the motor systems for the climbing mechanism, and tracking down random parts we…

We spent yet another productive meeting advancing our various projects today; the build team, despite several of their members not being able to attend, worked on finalizing the designs for the lifting mechanisms, organizing and updating our inventory, ordering parts and, most significantly, began constructing the chassis for the competition robot, so when the parts…

Today we’re going to complete our first set of team spotlights with a spotlight on the team responsible for bringing you this very blog: business. Over the past three days, the business has planned the team dinner, finished two steps along the road to being eligible for the chairman’s award, the most prestigious award available…

Today we’re going to spotlight the programming team, and we are proud to say, after a week and a half of hard work, we were finally able to get Frank, our test robot, moving! This will provide our team with a means of working on programming for challenges before the build team is finished, ensuring…

For the next few days, we’ve decided to spend each entry spotlighting a team, and giving more detailed entries on what they do, the challenges they face, and the steps they take to overcome them. So, without further ado, the build team! Today, the build team worked on finalizing prototypes for the robot; comparing motor…

We had another productive meeting today, with the build team working to finalize the designs and prototypes for the robot. As we mentioned on yesterday’s entry, the deadline for finalizing theses designs is the end of the meeting tomorrow. The programming team started to design a universal drive program we’ll be able to use on…

We had a comparatively quiet session today; we spent most of the time advancing and completing projects we’d already started. On the building end, the lift team designed a prototype to display for the rest of the group, and, after some group problem solving, modified the design to allow for higher dependability. The rest of…

Today, the build team continued to prototype the designs for the hopper rig and the lifting system, while coordinating with the electrics team about the design of the robot as a whole. The electric team continued to work on the wiring, connecting motors to the central processing unit, and correcting a few minor errors in…

Today was the first meeting after the build season kickoff, and we’ve launched into a flurry of activity. The build team, having the details of this year’s challenge, has divided into subgroups based on the various engineering challenges presented by the new course. One  such group is working on the robot’s self-lifting mechanism, and are…

Today, we advanced several of the projects we began last weekend. The build team finished constructing the table and sanded it, and organized the shelves. The electrical team constructed the bottom of the robot, attached the electronics board to a wheel setup, worked on wiring it up, and then bolted the whole thing together. This…