Catching up with Team 9612
Team 9612 has been very successful this year, placing 4th in our first meet at Lutheran High School in St. Charles. Our original concept was a robot that would use a scissor lift to raise the yoga ball on top of the vortex, two wheels with weather stripping to suck balls in, and two wheels to launch them up a curved ramp into the center vortex. At the first meet, none of that happened; we had a scissor lift, but it was unreliable, needing way too much fixing that we didn’t have time for. We just played “the beacon game,” and managed to place 4th.
Between that meet on 12/10/16 and our first qualifier on 1/7/17, we made a lot of massive changes. For starters, we decided that Tetrix parts were too unreliable, so, with Dr. Kreyling’s guidance, we made almost the entire robot out of steel. Now, the scissor lift works beautifully. The suck mechanism looked like it would work, but it was a little iffy. When we got to the qualifier, we found a number of problems. The arms to pick up the yoga ball got stuck nearly every time, so we weren’t able to cap the vortex in any of our matches. Our ball collection mechanism just flat out didn’t work, so we scratched that too. Again, we just played the beacon game. We placed 6th overall, and we were the 3rd place Alliance Captain’s first round pick. Our alliance lost every game, but it was a the best an Oakville Robotics team has ever done.
Now, we are preparing for our second meet tomorrow. The scissor lift works perfectly, now featuring double motors with double the torque, so it should be way faster too. Our ball collection and shooting mechanism is nearly completed, but we will update with the specifics on that after our competition tomorrow. We are currently in 16th place in the NE Division, and the top 18 advance to the Conference Qualifier in Rolla, so we are hoping to do great at this meet, securing ourselves a position at that qualifier.