Blog Posts - Q Branch Robotics FIRST Team 4327

FLL Jr. Expo

11/23/2019

Today at Lakeview High School, we were proud to host the FLL Jr. Expo. 80 elementary schoolers woke up bright and early to set up their presentations in the hallways of Lakeview, for everyone to see. There were different rotations for the kids to go to. Different teams from all over Michigan arrived at each station ready to be apart of the amazing experiences ahead. One of the stations showed off the 2019 FRC competition robot and the 2019 FTC competition robot who up until now was named the Nindroids, as of this year it is now named Q2. Q2 is named for being the 2nd branch of Q Branch. After watching the two robots in awe, they moved on to building or drawing. The kids were given gumdrops and toothpicks to build whatever structure they wanted. One of the adults decided to join in and see if his structure could hold a large bottle of hand sanitizer, (it worked!). The kids created some amazing structures and were very proud of themselves! The kids also got to color a beautiful poster, showing off their creativity and their journey of discovery. The attending teams were greeted by our guest author, Simon Thalmann, and the Bruin Bear both of who are from Kellogg Community College at one of the stations. The Bruin Bear was moved and played by our Chairman’s captain, Alayna Robinson. They also got to see Heavy Metal 2.0 shoot shirts. The turnout was fantastic and lots of kids had a great time!

Skills Camp #1

11/2/2019

Today was the first Skills Camp of the season. We are preparing for the upcoming season by introducing the incoming members to each of the subteams. All members are getting to work hands-on to make a positive impact for the upcoming season. As well as getting the newcomers ready to be a part of the season, but we are also sparking their interests for STEM and showing them a whole world of opportunities to pursue it as a career. This year we have 10 newcomers, that makes up about a third of the team, with all of these new members makes up the relentless group of people who come from different backgrounds After today, every member will be divided into a subteam for the year. The different sub-teams will make their own significant advances in creating this season’s robot. The rookie members are finding their individual jobs in their subteam, their captains are guiding them to find a new perspective on STEM.

Jackson District Event

3/22/2019

It’s our second district event and it’s already been kicked off to a great start! Our CAD/Programming captain received a gift bag, that contained a Barbie Engineering Doll he gave away to a young student on an elementary FIRST team. At this event we won the imagery Award- an award that “celebrates attractiveness in engineering and outstanding visual aesthetic integration of machine and team appearance.” All Q Branch students were super cheerful and proud to win this award. It was a very big honor and excited all of us!
Because it was Jackson’s rookie event, and we have experience hosting, we helped them out with coordination. Our team stayed and helped tear-down their event for an hour, where we decided to have a bit of fun while working-we made a giant tape ball that was collected up from the tape used on the field.
We can’t wait to compete at the East Kentwood district event next week. A huge thanks to our parents who made plywood numbers to cheer on smaller/rookie teams attending this event. We can’t wait to compete! We plan on bringing our team goose to this event, too! It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Lakeview District Event

3/9/2019

Today, at the Lakeview District event that we also hosted, we competed and overall had a great time! It was very exciting to see our pink robot out on the field. Part of the opening ceremonies included a video provided by state senator Debbie Stabenow, where she said our mantra: This is How We Robot!
Over our build season we started and mentored team 7811, the St. Phil Tigers who won the Rookie All Star Award. It was great to see how much their team has grown during all of our build season. They’ve grown so much over this period of time and we’re all very stoked for them!
We won the Gracious Professionalism award! It’s an award that recognizes teams demonstrating the core values of FIRST. All of our members were very proud and felt so honored to be able to win it. We’re so happy and excited for our next event and can’t wait to compete, at the Jackson District Event in two weeks! In addition, meet Frederick. For the first time ever, we have a mascot! Introduced to us by our team captain, Dominik Kerschbaum, we now have an official goose that will lead us in the stands. Our goal for him is to have as many signatures on one of our team shirts as possible. Frederick will continue coming with us to events.

Last Friday of Build Season

2/15/2019

As the build season is ending we continue to work with subteams to finish everything up for our upcoming competition season. Everyone is super pumped, especially our rookie members who get to see it all for the first time! In celebration of the upcoming season, we made locker posters that are displayed to let the other kids at our school know who we are. Upcoming is our annual Open House, in which we celebrate with our parents, sponsors, and Lakeview administration all of the work we did during build season. It will be this coming Monday, February 18, from 6PM to 7PM. We can’t wait to see and show all of the amazing people involved with our team.

Build Season Week 4 - Saturday

2/2/2019

Our CAD team tested many aspects of the claw on our Big Arm. They tested to make sure the claw fits inside the starting configuration of our robot, which is tucked inside the frame perimeter. The ROBOJACK was also put into the robot on CAD to make sure it fit inside. The Big Arm on our robot lacked support and started to bend, so more supports were created to prevent from any sort of bending or falling. Two robots are built every year, one practice robot to test mechanisms and to practice driving, and one to use directly for competing. Our Mechanics team worked on making a second claw and arm for our competition robot after it had been put on the practice bot. Motors were also wired to get the Big arm and claw moving, to test how well both of those mechanisms held up. Our Chairman’s team worked on the essay for the Chairman’s award, and voiced over our video. Chairman’s also prepared for our Sponsor Night presentation coming up on February 18th by having students practice presenting as well as edit slides in our presentation to express as much about our team as possible.

Build Season

1/23/2019

During the prototyping process, our mechanics team tested and decided against suction cups because while it lifted up hatch panels in a functionable way, it couldn’t pick up the cargo, so we went with a velcro design instead. This was designed by our CAD team. Since then, our mechanics team finished our electrical board and mounted it onto the chassis. They’re also making the claw to pick up the hatch panels and cargo for our big arm. Our CAD team assembled the RoboJack, which is a scissor lift used to lift up the robot on to Hab level 3. They also designed the claw in an effort to get the velcro piece working and connected to the big arm. Our Chairman’s team continued to work on the essay and make more progress to the video. They also worked on the presentation for our annual Sponsor Night, hosted on February 18th.

Build Season

1/19/2019

Today was the beginning of build season . The race is on, time to plan and bring our ideas to life and begin prototyping. First we came up with the idea of suction cups to be able to pick up the cargo in Destination Deep Space then began prototyping with suction cups of various sizes,shapes,and materials. After a failed attempt to find a suction cup that would be able to grasp on to the cargo we are now putting our focus on a wheel intake system . We started the research process to be able to raise/lift our robot to hab level three (13in from the ramp or 1ft1in from level 2). The CAD/Programming team is beginning to digitally build drivetrains to determine whether we will use a 8-wheeled drive or a 6-wheeled drive system and determine what will be more beneficial for out robot in the game.

Kick Off

1/5/2019

Today, we celebrated the official 2019 kickoff event! After watching the live feed to find out what game we’d be playing for the year, we read through a couple sections of the game manual, and played a human game, where team members pretended to be the robots. For the Sandstorm period, each “robot” closed their eyes. For each match we had, the rules changed for different strategies to use. Overall, it was a very exciting day for our team! All of us are very pumped for build season and couldn’t do it without our very helpful mentors, sponsors, and coaches.

FTC State Championship Set-Up to Tear-Down

12/15/2018

All 4327 team members and FIRST volunteers got together to host the annual FTC Michigan State Championship event. We set-up and tore down the fields used for the. Some of our team members were referees, other members watched the safety glasses booths, and other members helped guide the teams to where they needed to go for judging. Overall, the event was great! We’d like to thank all of the FIRST volunteers who came and helped out at the event. We could not have run this event without your support.