One Week from Comp!

published 3/1/2025

25th Anniversary and Comp Gear

Our team is turning 25 in 2025! Our team shirts and some of our buttons will be sure to let everyone know we are celebrating. They will also reflect the fact that we finally have a water game! Our sponsor banner has also been updated. Pictures of everything will be posted once they are made.

Parts

We sent our parts of to Synergy to be printed. We gave them a lot to do, and they did it all beautifully! They carved our team initials onto the Rio mount wall and their name onto the cage cage.

Battery Box

In previous years, we have 3D printed our battery holders. This has worked, but not very well. The plastic would warp under the pressure of the battery. We would have to heat the plastic to move it, apply hot glue where it was needed, and then re-heat the plastic to move it back over the hot glue. This was not fun. Plastic fumes are not good for us.

This year, we managed to make a metal battery holder! It looks much sturdier. We think it is promising.

Assembly

With our freshly manufactured pieces, we were able to begin assembling different components, as well as get some of them attached to the baseplate.

Bumpers

One of our students is putting their sewing skills to use for the team by making our bumpers. Instead of one set of blue and one set of red, we will have a single set of blue bumpers with a red cover.

The blue canvas is stapled on to the bumper and will have a vinyl set of 453 numbers ironed on. The red cover will function similar to a fitted sheet; the bottom edges will be lined with elastic for a snug fit over the blue. This should hold during matches but still be easy enough to remove when we have to switch back to blue.

The mini prototype of the "fitted sheet" is shown here (except it's blue and not red).

Whiteboard

Apparently, our team has many talented artists this year!

This board has a lot. We've got a bot mechanism design plus comic and video game characters. Original doodles, math help, and Face. What does it mean? Why is it there? Only its creator knows.

We also have an inspirational affirmation to lead us into the week before our first competition.

If the board changes, updates will be posted in futrue blog updates.