2009 Robotics Championship Of The Americas

The 2009 VEX Robotics Championship Of The Americas was held this weekend at the Omaha Civic Auditorium. Our builders club was asked to come entertain the crowd and hand out an award tonight. Our contact, Allison Pappas, was great. She was everywhere helping everyone with everything the entire event. We were suppose to keep our presence low key so Patches was hidden under a blanket (behind the main stage curtain) waiting for his cue to enter. James filmed the presentation while other builders got Patches ready.

Michelle, Jason, and I setup the table in the lobby while Patches was on stage. Shortly after the award presentation, we got a flurry of people stopping by to ask us what we are all about.

Patches wanted to play Elevation with the other VEX robots.

Patches stopped by the booth to see how we were doing and interact with the crow in the lobby.

Patches stopped by the pit area to interact with more people.

Towards the end of the evening, Patches came back to the lobby for some photo ops with teams leaving for their hotels for the night.

As the evening ended, Patches dome was swapped with the R4 head and he decided to play Dance Dance Revolution.

Brake-zilla

The brake I bought from Harbor Freight was not sturdy enough to handle the 5052 aluminum we are using for the motor mount/ankle project. Steve cut and welded some spare pieces of angle iron and steel he had laying around to make a new brake...a large brake...a strong brake...BRAKE-ZILLA!

Steve fixed the motor mounts that were not bent correctly on the last build day and then get bent three more motor mounts sets.

We have four complete sets of motor mounts bent (ankle pieces still need to be bent).

While Steve was bending the motor mounts, I continued to drill the holes in spacer pieces.

We wanted to have one motor mount for display at the Robotics Championship Of The Americas on Friday, so Steve swapped out the metal lathe setup to tap four spacers and assemble the motor mount.

Brad's Center Leg

Tonight, Moose and Brad put together the internal center leg supports for Brad's R2. They started out by cutting the angle iron to length.

Brad and Moose took turns stick welding.

Brad removed the slag.

Brad and Moose dry fitted the braces and stood back to admire their work.

More Motor Mount Making

Steve, Clay, Brad, Jason, Moose, and I continued or work to make the modified Dan Baker motor mount/ankle sets. Steve setup the metal lathe and we collectively drilled pilot holes in each side of the metal spacers. After that was done, Steve changed the lathe around and we drilled out about half of the spacers to the exact bolt depth we need. On the next build night we will have to drilling the rest of the holes and tap the spacers.

Brad and I had to increase the hole that the motor slides into by using a router bit. We got almost have of the motor holes drilled before the bit snapped and Jason ran to the store to buy a new one.

After the holes where routed out, Clay uses the drill press and a sander attachment to smooth out the edges left by the router.

Steve and Moose setup the bending brake I got from Harbor Freight and tested out the bending process on a set of motor mounts. It turns out you get what you pay for. The bending brake is not sturdy enough to make a consistent bend across the entire motor mount because we are using 5052 aluminum. Steve said he will weld steel plates onto his bending brake to strengthen it and we will try again at the next build day.

Even though we need to fix the bends on these motor mount/ankle pieces, we placed a motor, wheel, and belt inside the mount to see how it fit.

Final Frame Sanding

At the build night tonight, I finally finished the sanding on my frame. The skins fit around my wooden frame without any gaps. I didn't take a picture because it looks like every other picture I have taken through the sanding process. Jason and Moose tried to glue the bottom piece of Jason's frame back together and support it with some scrap aluminum. If this doesn't work, then a new A&A frame piece will have to be purchased.