About
The Game
Team Abilities
2014 was the first year the robot was designed prior to manufacturing. The team had an influx of new strong Mentors who were alumni of other teams. This year the team invested in a small tabletop Drill Press and had a few parts that were manufactured by a local engineering firm. The rest of the robot was COTS or made with simple hand tools much like 2013 Robot Aunt Jemima.
Robot Name
The robot was named after Mackenzie who was a family friend of one of the families on the team. This started our whole partnership with OneMatch and naming our robot after someone in need each year.
Fun Lore
- Our first match of the year holds the world record for scoring (with penalties) watch it here
- We totally broke this robot! We put stiff surgical tubing on the linkage and it dramatically broke itself instead of stretching the tubing.
- It had a very useless hard-stop piston that we had only put on because a Robot Inspector told us to, but then we accidentally forgot to deactivate the piston and it turned on during the match and broke itself :)
- First event win!
- “Why is there one blue wheel on the intake?” “Because we were poor!”
- We built a shooter protoype inside a house that was too large to fit out the door, so instead we practiced by shooting out the door.
The Robot
The robot was heavily inspired by the Ri3D team Oryon Labs Robot in overall structure, though much of the actual robot was modified adding other concepts in. Our robot featured a motorized single joint for pivoting the arm up and down, a Choo Choo Mechanism Shooter. Top rollers and guides to center the yoga ball, and pneumatic arm to add or remove contact with the ball and the top roller during pick up or shooting phases.