Battle of the Techbots (PREVIEW Pt. 4 of 4): Chips Miller vs. The Breakfast Club

Techbots sign

A battle for Techbot supremacy is coming soon to the classrooms of Moraine Park. Here’s a preview of one of the first-round match-ups.  Check out the bios and watch the videos below, and let us know who you think will win in the comments section! 

PROJECT DETAILS: 

Moraine Park’s Integrated Manufacturing Classes are required of students in the Mechanical Design, Process Engineering Technology, and Mechatronics programs.  Students in these programs take the course together and work in cross-functional teams to complete a project.  This year’s project was a Techbot competition.  Four teams in the evening class and four teams in the day class are building remote-controlled robots that will compete against each other by battling in an 8ft x 12ft cage.  Each team designed and built their Techbot from scratch.  Limitations included a $250 budget and a 15-pound weight limit.

Preliminary rounds will take place on Wednesday, May 4 for the evening class, and Friday, May 6 for the morning class. The finals will take place on Wednesday, May 11.

If you want to get in on the fun and see what career opportunities await you, visit morainepark.edu/programs for all the details!


ROBOT NAME: CHIPS MILLER

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TEAM MEMBERS: Keith Bahrke, Ethan Vetter, Rob Fricke

TEAM NAME: The Whippersnappers

CLASS: Morning

ROBOT FEATURES: 

  • A substantial hollow square shaped turning mechanical roller that is made of solid steel.

DESIGN THOUGHTS: 

  • Chose the substantial weapon to spin in reverse allowing for possible flipping of opponents bot.
  • We needed light weight under 15 lb. max. so we chose the rest of the bot to be made of aluminum instead of steel.

WHAT WAS LEARNED: 

  • Most interesting was researching and coming up with designs.
  • Most challenging was the redesigning and getting all the parts made and made to fit together properly; especially because the main person who designed it kind of dropped out in the middle of the process.
  • We had a competitive design in the beginning to go with, but we chose his because he had made one very similar in another class and everybody in the group really liked the weapon. But we scrambled with help and insight from instructors and found ways to get the bot ready for assembly.

versus

ROBOT NAME: THE BREAKFAST CLUB

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TEAM MEMBERS: Joey Fisher, Richard Street, Austin Scholz, and Corey

TEAM NAME: The Breakfast Club

CLASS: Morning

ROBOT FEATURES: 

  • Made of a frying pan.
  • Spinning scoop around the robot.

ROBOT DESIGN: 

  • We chose this frying pan shell because we wanted to be different and save money.
  • The weapon was chosen because the majority of the groups wanted to do a spinning bar and we wanted something else.

WHAT WAS LEARNED: 

  • Nothing was particularly challenging because of our sound design. However, the programming was the most time consuming.

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