Hard work pays off!

Hello Everyone~

Well, we have had to make some changes to the robot. Arrow, one of our mentors, always says 'Break it early, break it often.' What he means is that for us to see where our robot is weak, break it early enough so that we still have time to re-design it, and test it again to see whether or not it will work like it should!!

So....with that in mind, our first re-design is with our ball chute. Remember the blue duct-taped chute? Well, you can forget about it. It was flexing too much and didn't allow us to shoot our basketball accurately all the time.
Here's the new prototype:

You can see that the chute is more rigid, so hopefully it will allow us to shoot more accurately to gain more points during the competitions.

Here's some other pics of our team working diligently:

Olivia soldering to her heart's content, wiring up the main controller of the robot:

Here's our battery compartment. Our robot runs completely on batteries, so batteries are important!! Notice how we'll use this for both battery storage and battery charging:

Our biggest challenge so far has been getting the ball off the ground and up into the shooter! We started off with a 'scoop' idea, but that didn't fly. Our team finally decided on a conveyor system that will literally deliver the ball up to the shooting system:

You can see the brown track of the conveyor off to the right side of this picture:

Here's proof that someone other than Mason actually works on this robot:

Wow....all our hard work finally comes together. This thing might actually work:

Still have more work to do! Stay tuned!
Thanks for all your support, everyone!

~Mason and Cassidy

Still brainstorming....

Hi Everybody~

Well, we have been working on making a chute that the ball travels up and then gets thrown out with enough force to make a basket. We have had a couple of different prototypes, but this one seems like it is going to work the best:

As you can see, the rubber-coated wheels help to propel the basketball up and out of the chute.

Here, Mason and Mr. Tracy Bartels take a moment to think about their next plan of action (actually, Mason is wondering what time lunch is):

And, of course, our CAD team is hard at work drawing up the latest dimensions and modifications to our robot:

We just want to say "thanks" again to everybody! We were able to raise enough money for both Mason and Cassidy to attend both competitions in Duluth and Milwaukee. We are so excited and cannot wait to go!!!!

Stay tuned....we still have more pictures to show you!!!

~ Mason and Cassidy

Making progress...

We have been working hard, putting in lots of hours just building the basic design and getting the robot to move! Currently, we are using 2 joysticks to control the robot, which works pretty good. You can see our progress here:

We have all split up into different teams: mechanical, electrical, CAD, communications and marketing. Lots of cooperation is required to get our robot built, programmed and financed.

Here's some more pictures of our team working together:

Here is what our robot sees!

We also just want to send out a BIG "Thank You" to everybody who has contributed their hard-earned money to help us get to the competitions!! We are so grateful!! Thank you SO MUCH!!!!

~Cassidy and Mason