Author: Quilon

This is Ivy Stout-Wright here updating you all on what the RamHawks are currently working on in our off-season. We have many projects going on at the current moment, as well as welcoming 3 new members!

T-shirt Cannon

You may have heard from Quilon’s post earlier this month about the All-Terrain T-shirt Cannon (ATTC), that we’re making steady progress on. We had a few hiccups with our regular T-shirt cannon earlier this year, and we’re working to get it back to tip-top shape.

Organization

Organization is an ongoing challenge. Different needs require different organizational methods and each year brings new challenges. This year we’re learning from last year’s mistakes and taking less to the competition, this should help with the clutter issues we had last year. At the same time, we’re also working on reorganizing some of the stuff in the Robotics Room. I’m personally hoping to get a new table at some point at a slightly taller height, which would help when we need to get underneath or near the bottom of a piece.

Welcoming new members

We’re growing! It’s exciting to see more and more people as interested in robotics as myself. We also have a 4th person interested in joining the team. They showed up to our meeting today. Hopefully, we will continue to grow our members this year. I’m very optimistic for the future of the team, and the more members we get the better my outlook!

Conclusion

We’re very excited to learn what 2024 has in store for us, and we’ll see you next post!

Hey, it’s Quilon Erdmanczyk, and we have started back up again! Winona Robotics is now ready to get this season on the road. We have already started on our off-season project, The “All Terrain T-Shirt Cannon!!!” I gave it a little bit too much spaz but it works. The ATTC (All Terrain T-shirt cannon) is getting its breaks so we can stop it when needed. We have one emergency brake almost like a dead man’s switch so if we lose power it activates. Then we have two front breaks for normal breaking.

Upcoming Events-
Watlow Tour
Training Day Program (December 2nd)

This is a long post sit tight.

This was an amazing year of robotics for our team. Last year we had few people on the team, this years team was bigger and better. We had lots of learning experiences all the way from a parade to a coemption. First big thing the team did was a parade, yea a parade. It was pretty cool but we had some problem during the parade like driving and reloading simultaneously. We ran out of CO₂ while shooting T-shirts so we started to throw them by hand. We also had to go through moving room locations but it was a bit bigger and better location. We have been moved to the Tech Wing of our school. Little bit later in the year we participated in a FRC practice day to see what skills we can learn before the season starts fully. We did a 2 hour robot Drivetrain practice and bumper building. It was so much fun. Fast forward like a 3 weeks to a month we went to a starting event for FRC and got our box of parts.

The box of parts included a drive train, battery, and some other parts. We got started on a build design before the actual build process so we had a Shark Tank kinda presentation. All the ideas were close enough to call the same so we smashed all the ideas together and started to build. Build starts and we have the drivetrain done in almost 2 hours. During the season we got the robot done over time. Finally the competition, the moment we all are waiting for. Half the team goes and sets up the pit and the other half did something. The next 3 days we had a great completion and exploring lacrosse. Sadly we ranked 53/53 😥 but that’s besides the point, what matters is that we had a fun learning experience. fast forwards a little bit we had a room rearrangement. That wasn’t to long ago. probably 3 weeks since the date of this post.

Remember the parade we were in? I bet you do, we got talked to by the person in charge of Winona Steamboat Days Parade asked us to be in there parade. Since we got that news 5 something months ago we got a mini 4-wheeler and were going to put our 6-Barreled T-shirt cannon on that and make it remote controlled. Boom your up to date with the WinonaRamhawks. Oh and here’s a video of everything we just said. (Don’t question the videos background music)

Last Saturday (December 3) we went to the 7RRC training day. It was great and we meet all the teams at the opening ceremony, we were the smallest team there. Some of the activity’s that we chose were canceled so we choose new ones. We all chose the KIT OF PARTS ASSEMBLY activity.

We did not get the whole frame together because we didn’t really follow instructions, nor did we have all the parts. At the end all the teams got to choose a tool from a selection of options from saws to drivers. (We chose a Milwaukee Hackzall.)

Near the end we learned how to build bumpers. We did pretty good. We also made new friends.

The FRC’s are coming up so as a refresher for our teams motor skills and just an overall fun experience we have decided to cooperate with Saint Mary’s university. Our mission is to create a passer that can track and indicate hits to up their hockey team’s performance. We have made great strides so far, we have created a drive train to test after doing a little research on our little buddies future field. We have also been working on an outer layer that can take hits at 100+ miles an hour at least that’s our goal.

On another note we have also been decoding the FRC trailer in hopes to have a little bit of an edge but so far we have squat. Some of our team will be heading to a short training day on December 3rd for a little bit more experience in things like coding and speeding up our “production” progress for robots and the like.

It is February and we have some big news for you. We have made big improvements on our robot. We have finished the launching mechanism but we are still working on figuring out how to mount the air compressor and air valves. We have also got the ball to get some good height with our test. We think it’s a good height so we will find out soon. We have some videos of our tests with the launcher that we will show you down below. 
Launcher test

Us having fun

Throughout our fun month of february we did some events with our other robot, The T-Shirt Cannon. We first had a swim meet we went to. We had fun at the meet and even let one other person shoot it. We had trouble with the cannon because we shot pool noodles and they were not heavy enough to sore the air, so we just taped a bunch of towels and shot them. We also were at a basketball game and it was great. We got a small amount of people to shoot for but we had lots of towels to shoot. We hit the same people a few times . But otherwise it was fun.

Last Tuesday and Friday we had the hoedown throwdown and we shot the T-shirt cannon and it was a blast. Tuesday we shot it at the crowd and the crowd loved it. They thought it was really cool and took pictures with us. On Friday there was a small volleyball game and after that we shot it again and the crowd wanted to be shot at. We only had seven shots and it wasn’t enough.

Last Saturday part of our team went to the practice course and learned a few things. They also saw a few techniques other teams did that we didn’t do. Most of the teams used flywheels. Also when people went to climb the monkey bars, the hand that holds the pole broke. They also saw teams make their intake out of wheels and belts. They even saw one team use lots of rubber bands. They saw that some teams focused on shooting the balls and some climbing the monkey bars. We are mainly focused on shooting the ball and if we can we want to try and climb the monkey bars.

Here are some pictures of us working on the robot.

We are excited about the game Rapid React.  We currently have six registered youth team members and four adult mentors although not all were able to make it to the kick-off event January 8th at Onalaska Lutheran High School.  The team enjoyed  Domino’s Pizza when we returned to Winona to open the kit of parts.

The game this year utilizes an oversized tennis ball.  Robots may control up to two balls.  Points are earned by scoring the ball into a central hub.  One point is scored for the lower hub, two points for the upper hub.  At the end of the match, robots earn points traversing an increasing height of monkey bars.  The higher the robot climbs, the more points it earns.

The team has been prototyping a pneumatic lever launch system.  We’ve finished building the frame.  Teams are required to build the robot during the season and can’t simply re-use parts, with a few exceptions, from previous years or off-season building.  We’ll be using new, brushless motors with encoders that will give us better autonomous control and variable power.

The donated shelving from Fastenal has tremendously improved our storage and space constraints within our room.  We had limited funding reserves coming into the school year.  We had to make the difficult decision to compete only in the FRC.  Hopefully sponsors will continue to support the Winona Robotics financially to cover team registration and expenses.  We’d like to resume competing in the FTC in the fall as well as the FRC next school year.  

Thank you for your support as we grow the team during the Covid challenges.