First of all a big congratulations to the Medford Vocational Technical High School Robotics Team, Sunk Robotics, for winning the MATE New England Regional Championship on Saturday! That’s 3 in a row for the team, beating out some very tough competition, including the Phillips Exeter Academy. The team will now compete in the World Championships in Kingsport, Tennessee June 18-22.
Additionally, this week we honored our seniors at the Vocational School Senior Banquet. This banquet is a tradition of the voke, having been held at the Malden Moose since the early 70’s. Awards are given to outstanding seniors in each shop, as well as academic awards. It was a special night, congrats to all the seniors for their hard work and dedication to the vocational school.
In our shop last week there was lots of good work happening. We’ll start with Junior Harlan Doeg who writes on his website:
This week I began working with the hands motors. I started on Monday by hooking up each one of the servos on the fingers to a simple bread board and running the sweep code through them in order to check if they worked and if the motors were strong enough to push the fingers shut. I managed to test the first four fingers, and out of them the pointer finger worked while the rest had joints that had too much friction to be pushed. because of this I used some WD40 to lube the joints before testing them again, and they all worked. On Tuesday I began printing out the last servo horn for the thumb, as the last one I printed had vanished. On Wednesday once the piece was printed I tested it out with the servo, and figured out that the connection was not strong enough and the servo would not push the horn when turning. because of this I got a non-printed servo horn that did connect and drilled out a hole into it so that it would connect with the thumb before Hooking it up to the servo. I tested out the thumb but figured out that it needed a better connection with the rest of the hand, so I epoxied the thumbs base to the rest of the hand, but the epoxy was not strong enough because the base did not sit flush with the rest of the hand. On Thursday I began redesigning the base piece so that it would sit flush with the hand, before printing it out. unfortunately the print messed up and was still not small enough to sit flush so I changed it so i could print it in two pieces, but I have to wait to print it as someone else was using the printer and the other printers glass base broke. on Friday I want to finish the print and I want to epoxy the base to the had so that I can test out the thumb and get all the fingers working together.
The 3D printed hand is truly amazing, please check out his website for photos.
Senior Anthony Cartolano finally finished his LED Jersey Frame.
This week I started to finish up my jersey frame project. After installing the LEDs last week, the next step was to add the plexiglass. I went to Home Depot to get it (1/8th inch), and the next step was to laser cut the proper shape to fit into the groove I made. I projected the shape of that groove in Fusion and exported it to Inkscape to laser cut it, and after that me and Milo carried it carefully into the shop. The piece fit exactly into the groove and we were able to screw it in perfectly. The next step was to connect the cover and the back together with hinges. We lined everything up and drilled then screwed them in. I was worried the pieces wouldn’t line up, but they did with no problems.
The last couple problems I had was how to keep the frame shut and how to keep the jersey in place. I made another run to Home Depot to see what I could find, and they had some latches that were just too big for the 3/4 inch frame I had. After going to a couple different hardware stores, I found a hook contraption that fit. I lined it up before I drilled to make sure it was good, and once I checked that we were good to go. I added two locks for extra stability and it holds shut perfectly. I tried researching on how to hold jerseys in place, but none of the solutions I saw were right for what I was doing. Instead, I just went with doubled sided tape and that’s fine until the jersey falls. Before I bring it home I wanna look it over and make sure everything’s fine, and after that this project is done.
Also check out his website for photos and video of the frame.
We are nearing the sumobot competition for the sophomores, more info on that as the date edges closer.
The Freshmen worked on CAD instructional guides last week – learning how to design a LEGO block and make a custom soda bottle as well as a paper clip. Next week they will be back working on coding and circuitry.
MVTHS Engineering 
You must be logged in to post a comment.