We have a tea club! Okay, it’s actually just a few students and two mentors enjoying our team mugs (with names on them!) and warm beverages since the weather around here hasn’t been the warmest. The high for today was at a sweltering 7° F, we were burning up! But tea club is still just a nice time for our mentors to talk with students, in fact, a few have used the time to talk about scholarship recommendation and ideas for Chairman’s.

App will hopefully be submitted to the app store next Tuesday! Average submission time is about two weeks. App would be submitted sooner, but snow days have delayed us quite a bit.

Robot update! Drive base is up and easily replaceable if something gets damaged unlike last year’s bot if you remember our mini octocanum drive base. Lots of partially complete components! Hopper, quick release, you name it, we’ve got it started. Although climbing isn’t necessarily a main focus at the moment. No ruling it out, but that’s not what we’re trying to get done right now. A line forms to use the aluminum chop saw, and our milling machine never stops! Sweeping up last night, we filled dust pan upon dustpan with aluminum and other miscellaneous shavings. A half hour into building tonight and cleaning is already necessary.

Programmers hard at work, safety manual being updated to add in first aid, animation is chugging along. Can’t wait to see what they produce for FRC 116’s animation contest! Too bad FIRST doesn’t have their animation award, but that’s alright! We’ll still make one anyway, it’s something our students have an interest in and is something they enjoy doing. CAD is a little bit ahead of build right now!

Update on FTC 6420 (an FTC team we started this year and continue to mentor, made up of mostly FRC 525 students), we’re doing autonomous! We’re working on consistency now, we make it approximately 3 out of 10 times. We’re also mentoring a new Boy Scout FTC team in our area of four students and two parent mentors. Their first competition is this weekend! We wish them the best of luck. You can see one of our students helping their team in the photo below!

Collin working with a rookie FTC team

 

We’ve spotted a proud mentor wearing her 2013 mentor pin that she received today in the mail. Our mentors love being a part of our team and the bonds that they form with our students are unbreakable. We’re so thankful for all of our wonderful mentors and the guidance they provide, not only for our team, but also for us as students, members of the community, and as role models.

Good luck teams and stay warm!