The majority of the first half of the week was solving problems. There have been lots of issues figuring out how to drive the climbing mechanism. We are currently using chain to drive, but due to the shape of the mechanism, slack builds up once the climber is halfway extended until the chain is so loose that it just skips on the sprocket instead of doing any work. We also ran out of vital parts that had been ordered that should be here by the end of the week. On Thursday, we managed to build a solution to slack in our climbing mechanism. The building crew also mounted our full intake to the robot and are working on welding belts to use in the intake, though there were several significant issues that may or may not be problematic in the long run. Friday, progress was made on the second and third stages of the intake, attaching motors and welding belts. Progress is also definitely being made on the climber and is coming along, but we are still working on getting hooks and the crossbeam in place. By Saturday, a lot of catching up was done and the intake was completely finished being assembled. It was tested, though it did not work the first time, parts were 3D printed that should fix all of our problems. Our climber only needs hooks, which we should be able to retrieve off of Amazon, but in the mean time, our color-wheel manipulator has been cut and painted and should be ready to put on the bot by next week along with possibly laying out a plexiglass case on the "top shelf" of the robot to house all the electronics and the battery. A lot of small changes had been made

From starting to prototype the intake system to finishing the Peanut Bot, we have been able to accomplish so much and are starting to get farther ahead of where we usually are in development, but that does not stop us from continuing to push ourselves continuously when it comes to getting even more done whether on the building aspect, programming, or whatever needs to get done! Thursday, the team was able to add some finishing touches to our intake prototype, then cut pieces and began painting them, as seen below. We continued assembly of the intake, and also made some design decisions on the shooter and the hopper. Coming to a close of the week, we did a test with our shooter prototype after adding foam backing and a 5 pound flywheel, which shot a good 35 feet! In other news, Peanut Bot , Test Bot, and the 2019 competition bot have all been reprogrammed to use for demonstration purposes.  Great things heading into next week!

Starting off in the beginning of the week, we hooked up our shooting prototype to a bag motor to test if it would shoot the ball. We were able to launch it about 15 feet which is a good start, but that still leaves 15 to go. We were then able to test the shooting mechanism with a Neo motor, which worked wonderful! When it comes to our chassis, we were able to get it fully painted black (as pictured below) and assembled the four quarters of the drivetrain and run it at full speed! Getting into the middle of the week, Wednesday we spent most of the day finding and ordering certain parts that we had trouble finding for previous orders. Work was then done on our peanut bot trying to drive the front wheels with a chain rather than belts. This is a bot being built as a side project for when we have local events here in Buchanan! Thursday, more work was done on button and shirt designs, and we have our seasons bot almost completely assembled! Finishing off, we hooked up the Demo Board to the robot, then tested the drivetrain against a "boundary" and inch tall, and it drove over perfectly! There was much progress that was made, but there is still a long way to go! 

Starting off with the beginning of the week, the team got together and configured design ideas and came up with this year's design of the robot. We took into consideration the different types of strategies we may possibly be able to use to help us aim for the win! With step one checked off the list, that leads us into being able to start ordering parts as we think about what we need to buy according to what our bot should accomplish for the 2020 Infinite Recharge season. On Wednesday, members of the team sat around and thought of gifts we could hand out to other teams! Closing in on the second half of the week, we continued to order parts, the build team built the drivetrain, started on the chassis, and started prototyping the lift. Great start to the beginning of the season!

The Chassis is built. The drivetrain installed. We have a drivable robot and are well on our way with the ball gripper system. We have also redesigned the lift (elevator) system we used for last year's bot. The gripper/ball intake will mount to that so we can reach up the nearly 7' to the highest hatch.

In the first week of robotics, we planned out ideas from the team and meshed them all together into one design.
We ordered the needed parts from Vex and started working on a mock-up model of a gripper for this year. While we're designing the bot, a few others were getting ideas for the uniform designs for this year.
-Brett