ENTRY
21

November 4, 2026

Rebuild Continues: Frame, Wiring, Intake Guard & Shooter Ramp
Duration 2.5 hours Attendees Josh, Torin, Sarah

Meeting Summary

We kept going with the big rebuild. We finished the frame, attached the guard plates, mounted the electronics and the shooter guide ramp, added a guard over the intake, and rewired the whole robot. We moved the intake, so we had to cut the ramp again. We ran out of time before we could test the shooter. We also marked out the hive and the back wall of the field in our practice space, and made plans for League Meet 1. We didn't get to write this entry at the meeting, so we wrote it together over Google Meet the next day while everything was still fresh.

Build: Frame, Walls & Guard Plates

  • We finished building the frame. Torin worked mostly on the robot.
  • Torin cut down our old siding and mounted it on the walls
  • We attached the guard plates
Yellow printed wall plates with our team logo and number, cut down to size
Our old siding, cut down for the walls
The robot with the yellow logo wall mounted on the side, the blue shooter guide ramp, and the rubber band intake
The walls mounted on the robot

Intake

  • We added a guard over the intake so other robots can't damage it
  • The guard stuck out too close to the 18-inch size limit, so we moved the intake up and back. That meant we had to cut the ramp again.
  • The yellow balls weren't being picked up properly, so we lowered the intake a little
  • We mounted the intake motor
  • We made sure no more than four balls can fit in the robot's loading area
  • Decision: we're keeping the rubber band intake

Shooter

  • We mounted the shooter guide ramp, and Josh mounted the shooter motors
  • We printed the redesigned shooter mounting brackets in class, but they finished near the end of the meeting, so we didn't get to try them. We made the old brackets work for now.
  • We temporarily mounted the servo for the gate that keeps balls out of the shooter until the flywheels are ready
  • We ran out of time to test the shooter
The blue shooter guide ramp and intake ramp mounted on the frame, with the rubber band intake at the front
The beginnings of ACNOZAD's reassembly
A REV motor in an aluminum bracket mounted to a blue printed flywheel
The shooter motor
Close-up of the curved blue shooter guide ramp bolted to the robot
The shooter guide ramp
Blue printed brackets holding the ramps to the robot frame
The ramp mounting brackets

Electronics & Wiring

  • We mounted the Control Hub and Expansion Hub, and temporarily mounted the battery
  • We hooked up and rerouted all of the wires, so everything is wired correctly and a bit neater than before
The rebuilt robot on the practice mats with the Control Hub, Expansion Hub, battery, yellow walls, and a ball in the intake
ACNOZAD after the rebuild, with the hubs, battery, and walls mounted

Practice Field Setup

  • We don't have our own field, so we marked out the important parts to help with positioning
  • We taped the rough dimensions of the hive on the wall. The tape outline is a little shorter than the real hive to account for its tilt.
  • Sarah put a strip of tape on the mats where the back wall of the field would be
A tape outline of the hive on a wooden wall
Our taped hive outline

Plans for League Meet 1

  • Our next two meetings will mostly be for dialing in the shooter and practicing driving
  • At the meet, we want to practice on the field as much as we can and try out every part of it, since we don't have a full field of our own
  • Torin will finish a basic version of the portfolio and print a rough draft to keep in our pit, so curious people can look at it and we can ask other teams and volunteers for feedback
  • We want to talk with and connect with more teams, including talking with the two Roseburg High teams about doing outreach together

Portfolio

  • Torin has already gone through the portfolio thoroughly. He left the programming section mostly untouched since he doesn't know much about programming, so Sarah will look over that part.
  • Torin will send Sarah and Josh the portfolio file on Telegram so they can look it over too

Fundraising & Experts

  • We don't have much funding right now, so we need to work on fundraising more. We might go back to some of the businesses we visited.
  • We know at least one, maybe two, more businesses are going to donate
  • We'd like to bring in experts to give us advice, but probably after this meet, since we're short on time and need to focus on the shooter

Homework / Action Items

  • Josh: fix his 3D printer; look over the portfolio
  • Torin: keep working on the portfolio; send Sarah and Josh the portfolio file on Telegram; print a rough draft of the portfolio for the meet
  • Sarah: edit this entry and upload it to the website; look over the programming section of the portfolio. At some point this season, go through all of our code, edit it, and get familiar with it.

This notebook was created with the assistance of Claude AI and Handy dictation software.