Our team has had quite an exciting three days! We've come in for hard work on the robot and had a company visit. First I'll talk about the changes we've made to Oddjob and then about the wonderful tour of NDC, Nitinol Devices and Components.
After much debate and discussion, our team had decided to go forward to a nearly complete reconstruction of the robot. We had a towering height originally designed to accommodate a 30 point climbing mechanism. However, that design fell through due to the amount of weight and we stuck with a simpler 10 point climber and height. Now that we are in the off season and preparing for Calgames, we have begun on reducing that unnecessary height from about 48 inches to now around 20 inches. This drastic height change we've worked on now for two days does present some draw backs. The electrical team now needs to redesign the electrical board to fit in a new space and the mounting of the shooting will also need fixing. These however do not even come close to the pros of this whole operation. Our smaller height will allow our drive team to move more easily around the field and be able to travel underneath the pyramid, something we were not able to accomplish before. Along with the change of height, our team also plans to fix our drive train's gears and add a set of omni directional wheels. Team 3501 has it's work cut out for it, but I believe we can get all of this done! :)
Yesterday, August 7th, eight of our students and two of our mentors had the opportunity to visit NDC, Nitinol Devices and Components, in Fremont, California. Previously known as Nitinol Developement Company, they were founded in Fremont 20 years ago and have been a booming business competitor since. They are one of the world's 3 major nitonol manufacturers. Nitinol is a nickel titanium alloy with some very unique properties. For anyone familiar with bendable glasses or muscle metal, that is nitinol. What I found most extraordinary was that this metal can be trained to act or expand into the shapes desired by the developers. NDC workers has used their 20 years of experience to perfect the developing techniques of their products. One fine example is medical stents. They have to make sure their products do not harm patients with metal allergies and function properly under the conditions in a human body. They test stents made for arteries and make sure the surface won't interfere with the artery while also testing for fatigue. My favorite part of the tour was probably seeing their machine shop since I am also a pat of the mechanical team. Seeing how they problem solved to create machinery they needed for the development of their products was amazing, like how roughly 90% of their machines was constructed and built by NDC workers. I believe I am speaking for everyone present, this company visit was amazing and we can't wait to tell the rest of our team about our experience.
Last but not least, pictures! I will be including photos from both the company visit and our work in the build area.
Sincerely,
Hailey Sanidad
VP of Business and Public Relations
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| Nitinol Devices and Components |
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| Our tour guide Craig showed us samples of the nitinol products they produced before giving us the company tour. |
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| A wonderful team trip, and we'd love to stay in contact or visit again! |
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| Here we see all that we have removed from Oddjob to get a smaller height |
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| Yep, our new height is roughly 20inches :) |
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| We will have to calculate and create a new feeder system |
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| Last but not least, we began working on the pnuematics for the climber and for the shooter to be attached to our smaller robot |
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