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Hiya Birdie Bloggers!!!! Welcome back to the best FRC blog in err…. Flourtown? We’ll go with Flourtown. Wow almost done, one more full week and then I won’t know what to do with all my free time! (Don’t worry we’ll still keep you updated on what we do weekly!) Now for the part you’ve all been waiting for--the amazing build and programming update! So wait no more! Now, sadly, our programmers have been at a standstill when it comes to working because we’ve had to make some extra modifications on our elevator before handing it over to them. Though, we have no worries and they’ve done all the prep work they can for when they get there hands on this bot and even finished the electronic panel! Now our builders have been veeeeeeery busy again! Not only have we been finishing up our practice elevator but we have the competition elevator frame mounted and the intake arms mounted as well. That being said, stringing the elevator has been a challenge. After a week of trying to string the elevator with rope, and sadly failing due to some very intense tangling, we have come to a possible solution. As I type we are currently “chaining up” the bot. Instead of rope we are using chains to run the first stage of our elevator and using rope for the remaining stages. So far it is looking pretty good. (As a quick warning I’m writing this on a Friday afternoon, and staying true to the Firebirds, we will most likely make sufficient progress in the next 48 hours so there may be many editor’s notes). Some other little things we’ve done: spray painting, more spray painting, and even more spray painting. In conclusion: our teams loves spray paint. UPDATE: Chains were a BIG no, and actually made us go over our max height, sooooo we went back to rope! BUUUUUT ROPE IS WORKING! We’re all pretty happy and gotta say super relieved cause this elevator has been a huge problem this past week. We are now making some adjustments to our climber to compensate for how we fixed our rope problems. We’ve had a day off due to bad weather, so sadly our shop was closed on Wednesday, and the following day was the Eagles Parade in Philadelphia (Fly, Eagles, Fly!), so our shop was a little quiet this week. Believe it or not, we have made in incredible process this week and are super confident going into Week 6! But don’t let us fool you, Week 5 has been filled with crazies, just like expected. There was a lot of dancing, WaWa, and some crowns made out of robotibal materials! And don’t worry Bridget has continued to play Kesha and Harry Styles all day in the shop… Our mentors now know all the words to Praying by Kesha. And of course our crazy vlogs are still being filmed even with all this happening, so keep an eye out for that and I’ll post a link down below! Now that’s all for this week, been pretty crazy, but exciting as usual! Be ready for WEEK SIX!!! Are you and your team prepared for the final week? And as always if this hasn’t filled your daily dose of Firebirds… CHECK OUT THE VLOG!!!!! VLOG!!!!: https://youtu.be/O5vT_rMDboE Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5IQluJKZTs1HG3n6yprTGg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firebirds43... Twitter: https://twitter.com/firebirds433 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/firebirds433/ Snapchat: firebirds433
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Hi Everyone! Yes it’s the beginning of Week 5 and this is the blog update for Week 4, buuut everyone needs a little antici….pation in their lives! So here we are! Since no one really wants to read on a Monday, I’ll make this brief. BUT WAIT UNTIL THE END FOR A VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!!!! As many people do, Week 4 was jumping over the Week 3 slump, and we jumped high… Very high… We did an amazing amount of work this week and are right on track! Our programmers spent a lot of time on our electrical panel for the practice bot. And guess what? All of our programmers used drills and band saw and we are very proud of them! Yes, they all have been certified and have had sufficient practice due to our training sessions during the off season (Watch our vlogs a fun time lapse of them working on it!). Our builders were just as busy though! We had a few obstacles to jump over but we were able to get past them super quick! On update on where we are with our practice bot: The intake mechanism in mounted and is currently being wired up!!!!!! We are now starting to gather pieces to recreate it on the competition bot. The elevator is in the process of being strung and wired, the elevator has been a very fun process, but by the end of this week we will have this process down to a science! We made some modifications to our wheels and finished up the specifications for our climber. The past seven days have been filled with looking over measurements, and looking over them, and looking over them once again. But it has been worth the time, because our bot is a b-e-a-u-tyyyyyyy. Week 5 will be filled with wiring our practice bot and starting to build up our frame for the competition bot, so there’s no rest for the Firebirds! NOW THE BIIIIIIIIIIG ANNNNNNNNOUNCEMENT!!!!!!!!!!!! You may have seen on our Twitter or Instagram that something is a little different with our team shirts this year. Well, no, we didn’t put a weird filter over our orange and blue shirts, our colors are actually PURPLE AND GOLD!!!!!!! We are very excited to announce that our team colors are now the same as our school the Mount St. Joseph Academy. We’ve realized that our school pride is something we are extremely proud of, and what’s a better way to show this than to wear PURPLE and GOLD! So keep an eye out for us in the stands because we will be shining with GOLD and dressed in PURPLE! (Guess what our robot is actually PURPLE and GOLD too!) That’s all we have for this week! And it really is a lot I know! We’ve all been waiting to announce our color change and we hope you all love it too! If you still want to see a little more of what we’ve been up to this week, CHECK OUT OUR VLOG (link below!)!!!!!!! VLOG!!!!: https://youtu.be/ui0R3d0msB8 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5IQluJKZTs1HG3n6yprTGg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firebirds43... Twitter: https://twitter.com/firebirds433 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/firebirds433/ Heellllooooooo Blog! Welcome to the end of Week 3, aka halfway through the madness we call Build Season! Like always our birdies have been very busy building and programming to their heart’s content! It’s been a long week so to relieve you all of some heavy reading I will quickly summarize our (amazing) Week 3
Our Builder Birdies have been hard at work perfecting our intake mechanism prototype and have since moved on to creating the version that will be going on the practice bot. This included getting exact spring and surgical tubing tension and placements juuuuust right (which took a very long time) and marking every little measurement down in our engineering workbook. We even spent a day using our X-Carve machine to carve out bearing holes on the intake arms. We are now continuing to make this intake with “robotable” material. Another group of girls have been hard at working creating our climbing mechanism and are currently working on mounting it and getting the specifications down perfectly, don’t worry we’ll be climbing our way to victory in no time! We spent quite a bit of time figuring out exactly how we wanted to climb, but luckily we came to a conclusion and we have some very busy birds making sure we have a great scaling device! We also started one of our favorite times of build season: SPRAY PAINTING BABYYYYYYYYYY. We have started cutting and gathering our pieces for the competition robot so we can start spray painting them in the amazing colors purple and gold (OUR BRAND NEW COLORS WE’RE VERY EXCITED!!!!!!)! Luckily our frame pieces have dried so they’ve actually been put together and our competition frame is waiting for a few more birdie hands to get in their and start building him up! Next week we will be focusing on getting the rest of our mechanisms on (especially our elevator because the last remaining pieces finally came in) and ready to test and give to the programmers! Speaking of our programmers! They’ve been keeping themselves quite busy with a few projects! They are still working with the practice frame we got to them quite early in the season and have been working on Autonomous like it’s their job (... well I guess it does come in the job description). AND GUESS WHAT: We’ve got a few of our programmers building a piece to go on the robot! They are building an electronics panel to go on the practice bot so we can get a functioning bot to them hopefully within the next few days! Luckily all our of girls (programmers and builders alike) are certified on all our machinery and tools so they’re on their way to be experts! (Pit Crew better watch out!) So that’s about it for this week! It’s been long, buuuuuut we’re halfway there! So we can push through and come out with an awesome robot! If you want to see a little bit more of what we get into during our week (and some fun and goofy clips) check out this week’s vlog on our Youtube channel! (Link down below!!!) Well that’s all we have for now! Make sure to check back next week for another update and if you haven’t gotten your daily Firebird fill, GO WATCH THE VLOG (I MEAN IT)! VLOG!!!!!!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTnajTKTcrk&t=88s Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5IQluJKZTs1HG3n6yprTGg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firebirds43... Twitter: https://twitter.com/firebirds433 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/firebirds433/ Snapchat: firebirds433 Hi Blog! Weeeeelcoooooooomeeeeee to Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeek TWOOOOOOOOOOOO. Yes it is already week two, no it does not feel like week two, are we sure Kickoff wasn’t 3 days ago? We are? Oh… ok… Well for our birdies finals are (finally) over. Our shop was closed from Sunday to just this Thursday afternoon. Oh, you know when we got out of our science finals we all sprinted (safely duhhh) down to the shop… after WaWa runs of course. We got right back into our prototyping and even got the practice frame up and running for our programmers as well as the frame for our practice bot. Currently on said practice frame is the base for the elevator we started to make and as I’m typing girls are bolting it right on (it’s pretty cute). We also started the intake mechanism with some fun jelly wheels (see our twitter @firebirds433 to get this reference #FIRSTSuppliers). A few of our builders are also working on building game pieces out of wood with a few parent mentors so we can start practicing on them and getting our drive on *insert loud yoooooo dawgggg here*. Also as I’m writing this we have a small group working on a prototype for our climber! It’s going pretty well and I think it will bring us to new heights! For our programmers they’ve been busy using the new practice frame and making rough drafts for Autonomous. They’ve spent quite a bit of time dealing with encoders. By that I mean they’ve might as well be dreaming about them because they have spent so much time working with them this week. These birdies have also started planning out code for Tele, teaching the new freshmen how to code, and all of them learning a little bit more about Mecanum wheels! Clearly it’s been very productive. Oh for those that don’t know, Friday WAS QUIZZO!!!!!!!!! AND I WAS VERY EXCITED!!! We sold 50/50s, Mulligans, some fun raffle baskets, showed off Siggy, and even had some extra time to dance a little (Firebird Style)! Huge thanks to all the people that made that night possible! Chairman’s Update: WE FINISHED OUR EXECUTIVE SUMMARIES!!!!!! ONE STEP TO FIREBIRD WORLD DOMINATION… nope not really… more like some more amazing ways to spread the message of the Firebirds and FIRST! Editor note: I’m currently watching the programmers run some Auto programs AND IT’S SO COOL Well, this week has been amazing and we’re already looking forward for week three!! Thanks for stopping by and make sure to check back next weekend too for our updates! ********ALSO OUR WEEK 1 AND 2 VLOG IS GOING OUT TONIGHT SO BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR IT!!!!!!!! VLOG!!!!!!: https://youtu.be/3i07s8iDHvQ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5IQluJKZTs1HG3n6yprTGg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firebirds43... Twitter: https://twitter.com/firebirds433 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/firebirds433/ Snapchat: firebirds433
 We are so thrilled for our graduating Firebirds! No matter where they all, they will fly high! This year we have 6 graduating seniors:
Emma Neill- Team president and Build Member, attending Penn State University Megan McBride- Build Member and Drive Team Pilot, attending Saint Joseph's University Tina Rice- Business Member and Drive Team Driver, attending LaSalle University Cianna Kisailus- Build and Chairman's Member, Drive Team Coach, and recipient of the 2017 FIRST scholarship, attending The University of Scranton Sydney Stockmal- Vice President of Outreach and Chairman's Member, attending West Chester University Gabby Egan- Spirit Member, Attending Penn State University Congratulations to all of our seniors! We wish you all much success as you fly off to your new nests!! Over the past two weeks the girls have made great progress on our robot. We finished the basic drive train for our robot, and are currently working on the processing program for Autonomous. The ball collector we created and tested was modified from our robot, Nox. It is designed to collect balls by working like a vacuum without bristles. We brought in new materials and through trial and error were able to adjust the ball collector for smaller balls. For the gear delivery part of the challenge we are working on a slide and catch mechanism that in the end will put the gear on the spoke.    Happy Thanksgiving! We hope your holiday was filled with lots of Raspberry pie and pi. The Firebirds have been super duper busy this season of Thanks! Attached is a picture of the things we are most thankful for, including YOU! We spent time lately working hard on the Eaglebot challenge. Our girls have been spending more and more time trying our best to create an awesome robot! We have focused a lot of time and effort on the kicking mechanism, which is on the robot and able to run! We have been able to kick the football really far and cannot express how excited we are to showcase with our fellow Eaglebot teams! We are going to be hard at work again this week and today will be headed over to Norwood for mentoring the FLL kids, so we will keep you updated!
 These past few days have been very busy! We have spent a LOT of time both in the shop and outside of the shop- always being productive girls! This weekend the girls focused a lot on the kicking prototype and eventually developed a mechanism which has been mounted onto the robot! We have also refined code and the robot's frame has been completely extended. We also spent our Monday at Norwood Fontbonne Academy mentoring their FLL team! We were able to teach them a lot about sensors and watched their presentation, giving them some helpful tips!
We had such a busy day today! School ended at 1:30, so our girls ran downstairs (safely, of course :) to get started on the Eaglebot as soon as possible. The girls talked about the different drive trains available and the pros and cons to each one. With the original drive train, the programmers continued to work on getting the robot up and moving. The prototyping girls worked on the kicking mechanism and really advanced the kicker from the last time. They added more surgical tubing in order for the kicker to have more power when pulled back. The girls worked vigorously in the shop until about 4:30, then headed down to Wawa for dinner. After eating, girls headed over to Wyncote elementary school in the Cheltenham school district to show our robots at the school's STEM night. Alongside Simple Machines, 423, we showed our robots from Aerial Assist and Stronghold, letting the kids drive and play with the bots. They also had a chance to build cars out of Legos and race them! It was such a neat experience and everyone had such a great time!
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