News, events, and updates from Team 254.
The T-Shirt Cannon made its debut tonight at the Bellarmine Spirit Rally. Set before the school's football game against its rival, St. Francis of Mountain View, the rally aims to boost school spirit and morale before the game.
The T-Shirt Cannon came out in the middle of the rally and shot 30 T-Shirts at students stationed across the gym. The students aimed to catch the T-Shirts in trash cans in order to win spirit points.
The rally was a great success and the T-Shirt Cannon was a huge hit!
After more than two months of hard work, Team 254's T-Shirt Cannon is complete.
Today, we recieved the parts neccesary for us to fill our high-pressure SCUBA tank. After filling the tank, we tested the robot extensively to determine how many shots could be taken on a single air fill. On one air fill, the robot can shoot more than 200 shots, well above our initial estimates.
We are very pleased with how the robot turned out and look forward to using it to promote our team, our school, our sponsors and our community.
The robot took its first shots today, shooting racquetballs. The robot shot extremely far, with distances yet to be officially measured.
For today's shots, the robot's tanks were filled by a shop compressor in the lab to approximately 100 psi. Early next week, we hope to start powering the shots off of the SCUBA tank.
After many days of work, the robot is almost complete. Today, we completed the indexing and tilting mechanisms and tested the robot in the lab without a projectile. The whole system seems to be working great.
A ton of progress was made today on the robot. The valve block was tapped for the 1" NPT hose. Furthermore, we were able to get the pivot shaft for the revolver completed so that we could mount the revolver on the base.
In the next few days, we hope to complete the indexing and tilting actions of the revolver.
Today, at the lab, we started programming the VEX controller on the robot. We finished the drive code and wrote simple code to open the main valve for a certain number of milliseconds when a button is pressed. Furthermore, the VEX controller was wired to the main robot power source after we confirmed with VEX that the controller will run off of 12V.
The main valve block is almost done with machining. All of the operations on the CNC Mill are complete and all that remains is tapping the pipe threads into the hole for the main hose, which will happen in the next few days.
Today, we got the main hoses in the mail as well as our scuba regulator. We hooked up the scuba regulator to the high pressure tank and found a 3/8" UNC fitting that would connect to the regulator. We then connected it to the low pressure tank with the hose.
Today, we completed the wiring on the T-Shirt cannon. The large gauge wire and the signal wire was run successfully.
Furthermore, we tested the valve,shooting T-shirts and small balls on a test bed outside the lab to test the range of the robot.
Team 254 and its robot, Devastator, had a great day at the 2010 Take Flight for Kids Festival. We had hundereds of visitors who all loved the robot. Some of the younger kids especially liked rolling the balls into the robot's intake and letting the robot suck the balls up. We also had a large group of team members at the event, allowing us to manage the crowds and run the robot safely.
The robot returned from the powder coat shop today. The scuba tank also returned from hydrostatic certification after passing its tests. We hooked it up to a test bed and successfully tested the valve.
The machining on the valve block has begun and is coming along great. The block will be finished on Sunday.
Wiring on the robot began today. All of the electronics were mounted on the drivebase and many of the power wires were run. The large gauge power wires and the signal wires still need to be run.
The T-Shirt Cannon's frame has returned from welding. The frame was prepped for powder coating today and will be brought to the powder coat shop tomorrow.
The high-pressure scuba tank will be brought to Ace Fire Equipment & Services in East Palo Alto tomorrow to get its hydrostatic certification renewed so that it can be safely filled with high-pressure air.