Week 2 of Build Season is now over, and so much progress has been made by the Girls of Steel!

This week we congratulated the FTC teams and FLL teams after they attended their competitions and finished their seasons!  That’s a lot of cake, but they deserved it.

Now more about build season!

In recent news, FRC shadowing began this week. FTC members have the opportunity to shadow the Girls of Steel and see each subteam in action and see how we operate during Build Season. Thursday, January 18th, was Teadora’s turn to shadow the FRC team after the conclusion of her FTC season.

“It was a nice time.” she said, “I worked with Mikayla and Emma with a mechanical subsystem. It is different than FTC because it is on a bigger scale and has more subdivisions as they build.”

FRC shadowing is so important because it allows the FTC girls to have a taste of what being on an FRC team is like, and it is how we get new members for the next year.

Regarding the robot, many things have happened over the course of this week. The electronics team finished the temporary e-board, as well as the pneumatics, wiring, and doing the encoder wires. The compressors were also assembled. On Saturday, January 20th, the electronic board on the practice chassis was modified to accommodate the lift.

The mechanical team has been divided into 3 teams: chassis, collector, and lift. By Saturday, the chassis team had finished the first chassis. The collector team had made 5 different designs and made prototypes for testing each of them. They are now currently modifying all of the designs. They are also working on a new design that combines the best 2 designs. The lift team has finished prototyping and is building a mechanism on the practice robot. The rough CAD has been done, and the lift designers are currently working on the final CAD.

The programming team has finished working on their drive code and is continuing to work on the autonomous code. They also started working on the manipulator code. Testing has also begun on the first chassis using the temporary e-board.

Here’s a peek at the progress at the practice field, thanks to many of our parents.

Wow! Keep up the good work, only 4 more weeks of Build Season!