October 12, 2026

Goals for the Day

• Build the shooter
• Fix the rear left wheel issue
• Mount all the electronics on a wall

Shooter: Motor Instead of Rubber Bands

• We decided not to use Torin's rubber band catapult, where a separate motor cranks up the rubber bands
• Why: the rubber bands could be too weak and break, and as they stretch out they shoot with less power, so our shot strength would keep changing
• New plan: mount the motor directly to the catapult so it spins continuously, with the same double arms, and feed the balls into it
• Mocked up the shooter and the shooter ramp. We'll keep working on them Wednesday.
• We are not doing the rotating turret for the scrimmage

Intake: Gears Instead of Chain

• The chain drive was causing too many problems, so we're avoiding chain drives. We made a geared drive for the intake and moved the motor closer to it.
• Josh printed the smaller gears that Sarah designed
• Switched to heavier-duty rubber bands and tuned all eight to the same tension by listening to their pitch
• Put on our new ramp and trimmed it again. It isn't perfect, but it works, and it's the right color.

Frame, Electronics & Guard Plates

• Finished building the outer frame (not the mecanum drive base)
• Moved the Control Hub and Expansion Hub to a side wall and arranged the wires to keep them out of the way of the shooter and intake
• Sarah designed guard plates in FreeCAD with help from Claude, to protect the robot and look cool. The whole front plate wouldn't fit on the printer bed, so she printed part of it, and we zip-tied it on to try it out.

Arena Test Drive

• Set up the whole arena except the flower and the hive, since we don't have all those parts yet
• Tested driving and the intake, and had fun intaking balls
• Found that our wheels were slipping on their shafts, so we tightened them

Rebuild: A Permanent Frame

• Took the robot apart to replace our temporary frame with a sturdy, neat, permanent one
• Found the wheelbase wasn't square, even after we'd fixed it before. We squared it and made sure it won't slide around again.
• Shortened the wheelbase so we wouldn't be over 18 inches long, then shortened it a little more so the ramp and intake fit inside the 18 × 18 × 18 in. limit
• The robot is now 17¼ to 17½ in. long, leaving extra room so size won't be an issue
• Cut a couple of bars that were too long

Game Field Mock-Ups

• Josh hot glued part of the hive framework together
• Torin bought aluminum for the hive base, but it cost $90, so he'll return it. We'll probably use PVC pipe instead, since we already have a lot.
• For our mock-up hive, we'll likely skip the tipping part and mount two angled sides on the frame at the right height, so we can shoot balls into it

Goals for the Scrimmage

• Have all our working mechanisms done: the catapult shooter, the intake, the mechanism inside the robot that collects balls and feeds them into the shooter, and a small arm that knocks balls out of the flower
• Have the flap done, which means we need a flower to test it with
• After the scrimmage: clean up the robot and 3D print neater parts for the league tournament

Fundraising & Outreach

• Video Games Plus donated $100! We've now raised $300.
• Looked at other teams' websites to see what a typical FTC website looks like and get ideas for ours
• Discussed another all-day session on Saturday (not finalized yet)
• Just for fun, our coach read us the list of Oregon team names while we worked

Next Meeting

Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2026 (regular time)