Today we had about half of the team on research, finding out different designs from other teams, and finding out potential information from team who will be competing at Utah.
Despite having so many kids on research we were able to improve our shooter design by inlining the shooter motor with the wheels on the hexshaft of our shooter frame. Our program-squad learned how to create their own websites, and created some funny websites with audio playing when you open the page. Our big research team drew different ideas seen on frc posts, but despite good research we decided against the idea of changing our shooter design, but instead stick with our design and iterate it to the fullest potential. ( NOTE- I came home very late, so I didn't write the post when it was supposed to be written)

Fun times researching
-Christoph Uhl

Last Sunday marked the end of week six which was very eventful and stressful. Not only did it mark the end of the build season but it also marked the day the rookies and veterans had to work together to complete a challenge designed by Mr. Harris. After the challenge was over the rookies scored 8/10 on that half of the final and the veterans scored 4/10. After this minor setback, the veterans decided that we should only bag the drive train so we could work on perfecting a shooter. So thats what we did, that tuesday afternoon we bagged the drivetrain and left the shooter out for revisions. now what must happen is the entire team has 3 weeks to work on getting a shooter that weighs less than 45 pounds to work well and then when we get to Utah we must assemble it before going to the first match. 

Although this could be a small setback what will be worse is if people start to think that way. As long as we work hard we can easily make a shooter that works and go win Utah. That is one of our underlying goals and with George as a driver and a capable team building the shooter I have no doubt in my mind that we will do it. In other news the written part of the final has been taken by some and everyone will have to take it on friday in class to determine if some go to  competitions or not. And although it will be challenging for some as long as we all study hard we should ace the final!

Happy Building
-Will

This past week marked the end of Waterford Robotics 2014 build season. As a team, we did not quite reach our goals of having a fully functional robot to bag on the stop build day. This might sound like panic time for Team 3245; however, there is a 45-pound withholding allowance. This means we are able to bring 45 pounds worth of material that we can work on up until the Utah regional.

Over the last two weeks the Veterans and the Rookies split, to work on separate robots, for this year's game Aerial Assist. The Veterans and the Rookies both took the approach of a pneumatic punch into a wheeled shooter. The Rookies decided to go with a nonadjustable shooter while the veterans are working on a manually adjustable shooter with the goal of motorizing it later. Originally the two robots were destined to face off against each other, but version 2 of the competition rules stated that the two teams would play with each other to achieve a maximum amount of points on Monday, February 17. The competition rules had strict deadlines that both the Rookies and Veterans failed to complete. The Rookies job was to pass robot inspection by February 14; however, to complete this inspection a Bill of Materials has to be completed. This was not completed therefor a valuable lesson was learned on deadlines. The Veterans too missed several deadlines on February 17th. Too date we have not scored a point with our competition robot. However, the Rookie Robot was able to truss toss and almost score with motors only running at 70%. We are confident over that over the next few weeks we will develop a successful competition wheeled shooter.

This past Saturday, Waterford was able to invite all Utah teams to come and play in the Assembly Hall. This was a great opportunity for us too see the progress of the other teams. The main theme was the Catapult and the Kicker. Every team that came had some version of a catapult or a kicker. Even though we have not completely perfected our wheeled shooter we are excited at its uniqueness and we think eventually it will perform better than the other mechanisms. Looking ahead, we will be working very hard over the next three weeks to finish our wheeled shooter and floor loader. The trick will be to keep them less than 45 pounds.

Daniel Matthews