[CRUSH-all] summer goin's on with CRUSH

[Bill Bennett]

Hi all

As you might imagine, summer activity is slow and low with CRUSH, but not without some stuff going on. Only a few of you are showing up for meetings, and we're having some fun, but I would encourage more of you to participate. When vacation or other conflicts require canceling a meeting, I'll announce that on this list. But otherwise our meeting schedule remains:
Tuesday and Thursday 3:00 to 5:15 
odd Saturdays 9:00 to 3:00
"Odd" means first Saturday, 3rd Saturday, and 5th Saturday when there is one. For the upcoming weeks, the Saturday meeting dates are
July 1 - NO MEETING - Independence day holiday weekend - also no meeting on Tuesday July 4
July 15 - yep, we'll be there
July 29 - it's a rare 5th Saturday, we'll be there
August 5 and 19 - start revving up for school

Sometimes we take impromptu local field trips, so please show up on time. If you come late, don't be surprised if you find the door locked and nobody there - we're out doing something interesting and you missed it!

Here's what we've been up to lately. 

Kareem is still getting refurbished. We redesigned the wheel mounts to have a non-threaded slip-in axle with a spring clip pin on one end to keep it in. This will make it much easier to take wheels on and off for tread or chain work. We also replaced all the wheel bearings with slightly larger ones that are available locally. This required completely disassembling the wheels so we could turn out the bearing hole to the larger diameter. All the wheels are back together now. We still have some welding to do to finish the wheel mounts. We'd like to get Kareem working well again for use in fall demos and exhibition play.

Joe took some interest in getting Woody running again. He redesigned the steering drive and the slack steering chain problem is nicely solved now. We've been working on software, still struggling to understand what steering sensor and driver control code will make this beast controllable. It's a good learning opportunity.

Yesterday we took a field trip down to Praxair to talk with Bill Witzigman. He's an employee there that did a lot of welding for us two years ago on Adil's arm. He gave us some advice on welding equipment that might be appropriate for our team's use. Now we're off looking for money to buy it. Bill also offered to give us some welding instruction on a Saturday at Praxair's shop, as a way to try out and learn on the equipment we might buy. That's a great offer, so we're going to plan it. Who's interested in coming? 

We're also starting to plan for Robolympics. There's some interest in creating carnival style games, and if we can get that done, it will add a very fun element to the event, as well as bringing in some money for CRUSH. This could be a fun activity for students and adults to collaborate on, so think about coming in to join that effort. It's also a chance for parents to get involved who may have stayed away because they can't or don't want to get involved in robot techy work. Come join the fun.

So that's the update from me. Hope you're all having a good summer and I look forward to seeing you soon.

Bill
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