October 13, 2015

Today we've been doing a lot of things to get ready for the Minnetrista Family Adventure Day. If you haven't heard yet, we're participating in Minnetrista's Family Adventure Day from 9am-5:30pm. We have some fun things in store, we're bringing our robot "Not Yet," Sphero balls, a craft, and a video display for everyone to enjoy. Several of the team mates worked on putting together the craft bags for tomorrow.

Tonight Hannah and John have been working on drive practice as well as making some fixes for "Not Yet." Moriah worked on making extra clips for "Not Yet." In other news, John and Hannah also worked on packing what we need for CAGE Match which will be coming up this Saturday.

Our fun project of "Totebot" is still in progress! Tonight, Kaylynn worked on making the centerpiece that will hold the battery for Totebot. Griffin worked on the wiring while Matthew helped mentor him. Mike supervised as helped where needed on Totebot. Conner and Andrew worked on the programming for Totebot tonight.

Kaylee and James worked on making some more storage cabinets for our team as Gary helped with that project. Shawn and Anthony are still working on the new scouting system. Caleb and Jacob worked on improving their 3D animation skills.

Again, the Minnetrista Family Adveture Day is tomorrow, October 14, 2015 from 9am-5:30pm. We have a lot of fun things planned and all ages are welcome. We hope to see you there tomorrow!

October 8, 2015

This evening we've worked on some fun projects as well as fixing up our robot "Not Yet." Mike helped the students make sure they knew what they were doing to fix some small issues with "Not Yet." Moriah had worked on replacing clips on the fork, and John worked on the intake wheels for the robot.

As for our fun project, some of the students are working on a "Totebot" which is simply just turning a tote into a remote controlled robot of sorts. This evening Hannah was working on making motor mounts and wheel mounts for the "Totebot." Kaylee, Asher, and Kaylynn worked on "Totebot" as well. An old teammate, Ryan, came back to visit today and helped mentor some of the newer students work on "Totebot."

Anthony and Shawn worked on getting the new tablets to interact with the laptop. The new tablets will be used to make scouting easier and getting all of our information in one place in a quicker and more efficient way.

Velvet was able to make a schedule for our team for our next upcoming event, CAGE Match. This evening, Rob and Max worked on cleaning up the network and Wi-Fi for the robot and driver's station.

EV3 Workshop

  LEGO EV3 ROBOTICS WORKSHOP

for 4th-8th grade students

Saturday, Oct. 31 or Nov. 7

10:00 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.

Workshop Fee: $25

Limited number of spaces available

Workshop held at:

Morrison Mock Professional Center (drive around to the back of the building)

3620 W. White River Blvd. Muncie, IN

Questions can be emailed to: phyxtgears@gmail.com

This workshop will be led by high school students of the Muncie-Delaware FIRST robotics team.

Adult team mentors will also be present.

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CORI Our First Off-Season Competition

On June 20, our team attended our first off-season competition: the Central Ohio Robotics Invitational, or CORI. Our team uses these smaller competitions to improve our 2015 robot, but also as a learning experience for our younger team members. For example, we have changed out our drive team for the off season. Our previous drive coach is now our driver with hopes of being driver in 2016, our previous driver is now our temporary drive coach before he goes off to college in the fall, and we have a brand new operator who also wishes to make drive team next season.

Our robot performed beautifully at the competition, and got us all the way to the finals. Despite our large scale mechanical improvements not yet being finished, we were able to increase the speed of our stacking mechanism and improve our intake wheels, allowing our robot to score more points every match. But, not everything was perfect. For the first time this year we did not make the top 8 seeds going into alliance selections. We were instead chosen by the fourth seeded alliance. After a set of challenging quarter and semifinal matches we were set to go into the finals. Just like everything this year, this was a new experience for our team.

Despite our best efforts, the opposing alliance won. But it didn't matter, because the day had been great for everyone involved, and it showed us what the future may hold. Next month we will be at IRI, the Indiana Robotics Invitational, and next year, we hope to go back to St. Louis.

The 411 on the CNC Mill

A couple of weeks ago, we received a grant from the Ball Brother Foundation. With this grant we purchased a CNC Mill.

After talking with Mike Koch a head mentor here at PhyXTGears, I began to have a better understanding of what exactly a CNC Mill does and how important it is that we have one now. We have a regular mill here in our machine room, it can cut on three different dimensions/axis' (x-axis, y-axis, and z-axis). And although it has been useful so far, you can only cut on one axis at a time and even then, it may not come out as perfectly as you need it to. Mike described it as an Etch a Sketch, if you grew up using those fun toys you know that you can create some pretty cool stuff, but it's going to come out with squiggly and choppy lines sometimes.

So here is the cool news about the CNC Mill, it has four different dimensions and axis' that you can program it to cut on. ( the x, y, z, and a-axis). They can all be working at the same time to cut away the material you put in. This machine will easily "Make parts that can't be made by man." says Mike. It can make intricate designs out of metal, it can make parts and edges just the way you need them to be with ease. No choppy edges or squiggly lines. Everything is just as smooth and exact as you need it to be.

We can't thank the  Ball Brother Foundation enough for their generous grant, and we can't wait to see the full extent of everything we can accomplish here with the CNC Mill.

Setting up the new CNC Mill