Short End of the Stick, Radio Silence
It's been quiet around these parts lately. The build season is over, and club attendance rates have dropped dramatically. Spring sports have also started, and the female IB/robotics kids needing a physical education credit (Mary) have taken this opportunity to join Badminton. Here's to a winning season. There's been nobody to write articles, and, quite honestly, nothing to write about. There are competitions happening these weeks, nay, right now (maybe), but we are not part of them.
We are allowed to build spare parts for our robot while in this inter-ship-and-competition period, and have taken advantage of this time to order some new gearboxes. We suffered catastrophic drive failure on a consistent basis during the 2007 Pacific Northwest Regional, and intend to have replacement parts should something happen to the wheels. We received our gearboxes this past weekend, but something was wrong.
One of the shafts (the small hexagonal one) was a stump. It was too short, and didn't fit into two bearings at one time. We wondered how it could have happened, and realized that the machine making them had run out of material. We had, quite literally, gotten the short end of the stick. There's also something wrong with the output shaft. It doesn't seem to have been machined enough. It won't fit into any bearing (not into the one from the other gearbox either, so it's not a bearing problem) and the gear that is supposed to go on it does not fit. If the Microsoft Seattle Regional had been this week, we might be running around wildly. Instead, it is next week. Hopefully AndyMark can send us some replacement parts reasonably quickly.
On the topic of arrivals, we are expecting our team shirts to arrive any day now. They are supposed to be made of awesome and win, so I'm really looking forward to getting them.
In other, less positive news, the Interlake Student Store is going to be open only during first lunch. This is because we are short of administrators to oversee us. Everyone (including the administration) hopes this is a temporary arrangement, as we had plans to introduce new products and do some awesome promotions.
