2019 Winter Newsletter
Happy New Year from Team 1700!
Gatorbotics has been busy preparing for our upcoming competition season. We're looking forward for all the great things to come! Continue reading to hear the team's most recent updates.
Lead Spotlight: Ella Henn
By Emily Chan
Ella Henn is the current Mechanical Lead of Team 1700. She’s one of the many people who build technical mechanisms for the robot. One of Ella’s favorite things about her position on the team is being involved with the decision making and “being a part of all of it.” Through Ella’s work as Mechanical lead, she is constantly coming up with innovative ways to make Team 1700’s robot even better! When she is in the Bourn Lab, Ella loves the Gushers in the snack cabinet, but her preference changes over time due to the new variety of snacks. Ella is a helpful and kind person who is an active member of the team. The first time I messaged Ella, I was surprised to see her reply very promptly, and from this very first interaction, I knew that she truly cared for the team members of Gatorbotics 1700. Ella is also a fantastic lead who is open to trying new things, and she even has a pet gecko named after her third-grade teacher, which is super cool!
In Ella’s free time, she loves binge watching Parks & Recreation and decided, during this interview, that she really needs to find a different show to watch. Ella loves Sushirito and eats it often, and says she needs to “find something else to Doordash.” We ended the interview with the question, “Would you rather be in space drifting but with fast wifi or on Earth with super slow wifi?” and she said that she would rather be in space drifting with fast wifi.
Behind the Scenes
By Carson Schultz
The Entrepreneurship Team has been busy working behind the scenes of Gatorbotics to prepare for the upcoming technical season. Here’s a brief summary of what we’ve been up to!
So far this season, we’ve designed a new team sweatshirt featuring the updated Castilleja gator, taken numerous photos and videos at technical sessions, raised over $24,000 to support supply fees and travel
costs for the build and programming teams, and improved our social media impact. Right now, we are working on improving our mission statement, creating more content for social media, modifying the Gatorbotics website, raising more sponsorship money to reach our goal of $30,000, reaching out to new mentors, and providing more opportunities for outreach in our community.
Building a Drivetrain in the Preseason
By Riona Yoshida
This preseason, the team built a drivetrain from scratch. Here’s what we tried and what we learned:
Making custom gearboxes
Although the milling process of making custom gearboxes is difficult, we were able to pull it off in the end. It would be nice if we could find a way to mill stacked items at the same time without shifting either of the plates in the process. It was also good practice determining the gears needed to create certain speeds.
Powering the drivetrain with mini CIMs
Using three mini CIMs seems to work well but since the drivetrain is much lighter than the real robot would be, we can’t say for sure. We are looking forward to testing the new NEO brushless motors during the season!
Switching from 35-Chain to 25-Chain
We originally wanted to try switching from 35-chain to 25-chain because the change would lighten our robot and take up less space. Some of our concerns included having to replace all of our current chain equipment and that the 25-chain wouldn’t be strong enough. Team members got to drive the robot around for a while, with additional crash testing, and the 25-chain seemed to be alright.
Using Blue Nitrile Wheels
The blue nitrile wheels are one of the most durable wheel types, but since the tread dug into the carpet it was pretty difficult to turn the robot. On the other hand, driving the blue nitrile wheels on hard surfaces proved to be much harder since the wheels slipped.
New Encoders
The new magnetic encoders seem to be working well!. It was quite hard to mount the sensor but will be easier if we make the magnet stick out past the end of the shaft.
We hope to use this practice drivetrain to begin driver practice as soon as the season begins, use it to quickly test prototypes, and give the programming team something to test with. See you on January 5th for the 2019 FRC Kickoff!
