Today, for the most part, the classs just worked on their cardboard cars. We, on the other hand, worked on getting out a second prototype of the handout, this time incorporating the idea of the winninng group from the last Wednesday Challenge. i got some scrap 2 by 4, drilled some holes, and had a working prototype by the end of the period. During the FRC meeting, in addition to working on the robot costume hand, I Told Mrs. Martos what we had decided to go with for the FRC handout, but she told me that as paper airplaned had been banned, she would have to check up on the rules to make sure that the idea wouldn't get us disqualified.
Today, we learned that our handout idea was illegal dur to the rules of the places that we were going to compete at. The rules stated that there couldn't be any sort of flying devices, which is exactly what our device was. As a result, we decided to switch over to Maddy's team's idea of a fidget toy. For the rest of te preiod, while the rest of the lclass was working on finishing up their cardboard cars, as this was basically the last day to work, we were tasked with thinking of ways to improve on the new handout concept. I was pretty bummed out, and on top of that, it was raining, so I decided to not go to the JPL meeting today. In hindsight, I think that I really needed this break because it let me get a load off of my shoulders.
Today, we had a Wednedsday Challenge that was exactly the same as the last one, except for the fact that the handout that were were trying to improve was Maddy's group's fidget toy. Our group wasn't very emotionally invested in the fidget toy idea, primarily because we didn't feel that a fidget toy had anything to do with 589, so for the most part, we were just socializing and talking about some really absurd and complicated ideas. However, we managed to pull together an idea while messing around with our now-illegal helicopter toy. I taped the string to a second helicopter toy made of a pencil and some more styrene plastic, and then added some collars to keep the rotor from separating from the handle. The resulting device was a bit like a manual fan that worked by pulling the wound up cord to spin the fan blades, and then letting the momentum of the blades wind the cord back up in the other direction, effectively letting me run the fan continuously by pulling the cord every 5 or so seconds. Like in the previous Wednesday Challenge, we masnaged to get all but 2 groups to present their ideas, with our group being one of the the remaining groups to go because we were to be the last group to present their ideas.
Wednesday Challenge 5: FRC Handouts Part 3Today, we started racing our cardboard cars down the track. Since they didn't make cardboard cars themselves, Erin and Keilah were chosen to be the spotters that would call out where the card left the ramp and make sure that the cars didn't fall onto the ground. Right before starting the racing, I tested my car 1 final time, and it went prefectly down the middle, so I was pretty confident that it would go down perfectly. However, When it came to the official run, the car only made it down about 11 feet, which was just over two thirds of the way down. I was pretty confused, and ran the car down the ramp again, and it went down prefectly again. Later on, I realized that I had placed my car down on the ramp with the rear end facing down, which made it veer off to the left. Furthermore, while screwing around near the ramp, Keilah and I realized that the bottom half of the ramp of misaligned by about 8 inches to the left. I tried to fix it by shimming the left side of the ramp with some 2 by 4 cutoffs that were lying on the ground, but I didn't have enough time to do anything significant. During the FRC meeting, I worked on getting the actual mechanism of the hand fitted into the mailing tube cum housing. By the end of the meeting, I had the plywood of the arm cut down to the right size to let Joey's hand open and close comfortably without sacrificing too much integrity.
Today, we had the second round of our car racing. I made it further down than yesterday, but it still didn't get all the wasy down the ramp. For some reason, even though I have consistently made it down the track every time when I have been practicing, when it comes to the runs that count, the car has been veering off to the left. This is really wierd, because this time around, I checked to make sure that the car was facing the right way before letting it go down the ramp. During today's FRC meeting, I managed to assemble the left arm of the robot costume, and as this was my second time doing this, I was able to assemble the hand in less than 2 hours, and had it completely functional, and even working better than the right arm. During cleanup, I put on both arms, and I was able to sweep the floor with a broom, pick things up off of the electronics/aesthetics tables, and wear and take off my backpack. The theme for today's dinner was "breakfast for dinner," but I didn't get the chance to eat any of the 17 pounds of bacon that Mrs. Martos had brought for us because I left right before dinner. While I was waiting for my mom;s car to arrive, I dropped the left hand, and two of the styrene plates on the fingers fractured a little bit, so I tore them off in preparation for glueing new ones on on Tuesday.I think that if I were to do this a second time, or even had time to remake the robot hands from scrap, I would either 3d print the entire thing in ABS slastic, as it is really durable and smooth, or make the finger pieces out of maple or some other hardwood, with brass rods inserted in the place of the strws to keep the wires form getting caught or frayed, use some better and slightly thinner elastic than the elastic that I bought from the dollar store, and either layer over the styrene with the hardened paper that I use in my paper swords, or just use hardened paper by itself, as it is extremely durable, sudden impacts don't do anything to it, and it is much easier to paint than styrene. In fact, If I had a year and an infinite amount of exacto blades to build the robot costume hand, I would consider making the hands completely out of hardened paper, as hardened paper is just that strong.