Off-Season February
Dizzy’s Journal Entry (Keeping the team spirit in the off season) A big discovery: bESTology I can’t believe Wally didn’t tell us about this before! Ever since Regional BEST, we’ve been doing little...
View ArticleCan Evernote get your Creative Team on the Same Page?
Having a diverse team can be a blessing when tackling a challenging project. But, let’s face it, having to work with others presents a whole new set of challenges. A team without effective...
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Journal 0.3 Preparing for BEST Kickoff
Dizzy’s Journal Entry (meeting just before kickoff) My team managed to meet twice the week before our Kickoff event. Today’s meeting is just to make sure everyone knows their assignment and...
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Journal 1.1 Brainstorming Conceptual Designs
Dizzy’s Journal Entry (1st meeting after kickoff) Handout: My Kickoff Worksheet: Robot Group’s Worksheet for Conceptual Brainstorming Session: Action Item: Before we can compare these ideas in a...
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Journal 1.2 Using Decision Matrix to Choose a Conceptual Design
Dizzy’s Journal Entry (choosing a Concept) Handout: Worksheet resulting from meeting: Each value in the table took a lot of discussion to agree upon. We really tried to reach consensus on each value....
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Journal 1.4 Functional Decomposition
Dizzy’s Journal Entry (Breaking Down the Functions) Goal for the meeting: Now that we have an overall concept, we need to break the overall function down into independent sub-functions (these will be...
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Journal 2.0 Problem Definition for Embodiment Design
Dizzy’s Journal Entry (Embodiment Design for Function #2) [The Saturday after kickoff] Goal for the meeting: The design team was divided into sub-teams and each assigned a function to design. Eve and I...
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Journal 2.2 Analyze and Choose Design
Dizzy’s Journal Entry (Choosing an Embodiment for Function #2) Handout: Coach was right, after a more sincere search for ideas, we wound up with 18 different ideas for Function #2 (collect sticks). We...
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Journal 2.3 Analyze and Choose Design-2
Dizzy’s Journal Entry (Choosing an Embodiment for Function #2 con’t) We demonstrated the prototypes for 14 and 18. Everyone agreed that 18 is WAAAYY cool! But, has its problems. Worksheet: * we had to...
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Journal 3.0 Combine Functions and Analyze in Embodiment
Dizzy’s Journal Entry (A Broken Arm Wins!!!) While Eve and I have been working on the embodiment for Function #2 (collect sticks), the “arm team” has been making CRAZY discoveries. I’m so glad they did...
View ArticleJournal 3.1 Self-Help Embodiment Design
Dizzy’s Journal Entry (The “self-help” principle in mechanical design) We had a visit from a mechanical engineering mentor today and told him about Vex’s idea for Function #4 (reorient sticks for AON...
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Journal 3.2 System Integration and Refining Embodiments
Dizzy’s Journal Entry (Changes inspired during System Integration) We still haven’t built anything…we haven’t even prototyped very many ideas and yet our design is evolving every day! Following a...
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Journal 4.0 Types of Drawings that Engineers Use
Dizzy’s Journal Entry (Napkins to CAD) [Two full weeks until Practice Day event] The build team started work on the few parts that the whole team agreed are Very unlikely to change. The rest of us are...
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Journal 4.1 Make Detail Design Decisions BEFORE Building
Dizzy’s Journal Entry (Caught a mistake BEFORE prototyping) History: -the game is Gatekeeper -Our team strategy focuses on collecting sticks and inserting them into collection bins. The sticks begin in...
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Journal 4.2 Shaft Couplers Required in most Robots
Dizzy’s Journal Enter – What Every Robot Needs The build team has the base cut out, the “wheels”/gears finished, and the motors mounted on the base…but we forgot to design a way to attach the wheels to...
View ArticleJournal 5.0 Build is in Full-Throttle
Dizzy’s Journal Entry (Build Crew Chugging Along…derailed, and back on track) [The Saturday before Practice Day event] Good thing I got the shaft coupler design finished. The build crew made them in...
View ArticleJournal 5.3 Polishing the Gripper
Dizzy’s Journal Entry (Gripper Works, but Could be Better) I was able to mount the servo to the gripper in no time flat. The new laminated wheels/gears look great! After only a few minutes of testing,...
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