Build Season and Clackamas District

Apex is back for its third season in FIRST POWER UP! Throughout the 2018 build season, we put a large emphasis on prototyping, and through countless iterations of different components, we learned many things about how prototypes can come together to form a final product. We decided on using an arm-ivator as our primary platform with an intake/shooter mechanism at the end allowing us to shoot cubes at varying heights and velocities.

Our robot is named "LEVEL RED" after the final level in CUBE, the fictional game from this video, and the practice robot has been named "The Dreaded Cone" after the primary antagonist. We thought this was fitting considering this year's video game theme! Our robots are prototyped, designed in CAD, and then built by our mechanical team over the course of six weeks, and this build season was the closest to on-schedule we've ever had. Build season wrapped up with a successful reveal party at our host school as well as a YouTube video that can be found here!

Clackamas, our first event, went extremely well. We seeded fifth and went on to place as finalists in the tournament, falling only to the amazing first alliance. Congratulations to 2046 Bear Metal, 4513 Circuit Breakers, and 6465 Mystic Biscuit who bested us in the finals, and a huge thank-you to our ascending alliance captain, 2811 Stormbots, and out excellent masters of defense and fellow third-year team, 5970 BeaverTronics! The event was an amazing opportunity for new members of the team to get their first taste of the action and for us all to get back into the incredible experience of the FIRST competition season.

Our robot performed smoothly for the most part, with the most pressing matters being issues with our climbing mechanism and our breaker blowing in Finals 1 and 2. Both problems have been resolved through tweaks to their respective components, and our team is eager to see an improved LEVEL RED take on the competition at Auburn as we continue to Pursue the Peak of Excellence!

2017 Season

Apex Robotics has had an incredible 2017 season. This year we attended Auburn Mountainview, Mount Vernon, Glacier Peak, the PNW District Championship, and FIRST Championship Houston. We won our first two events, and though some problems prevented us from placing well at the District Championship and the Houston Championship, we still worked our hardest to represent our team, our school, and our community as well as possible. To follow our progress through the 2017 season, check out thebluealliance.com/team/5803

Congratulations are very much in order to the #1 alliance on Roebling, teams 973, 1011, 2928, and 5499. We had a lot of fun going up against your amazing alliance in the quarterfinals! We would especially like to congratulate Team 2928 Viking Robotics for becoming the first ever PNW team to win a championship at the world level!

We would also like to thank our alliance partners, 1477, 1414, and 6508. We put up a good fight against the championship-winning alliance and were very happy to be competing alongside some extremely strong robots!

Lastly we would like to announce that our offseason, Peak Performance, will be back for a second year! The date will be announced soon, so stay tuned at offseason.apexfrc.com and sign up for update emails by sending an email to peakperformance@apexfrc.com

Thank you to everyone who made this season a success. We'll be back!

Auburn Mountainview

Apex competed at Auburn Mountainview this past weekend, our first district event. We all had a wonderful time, and after two days of hard work, Apex Robotics ended up taking the winner's trophy! We also were awarded the Industrial Design Award, and ranked fifth in the qualifications.

Apex would like to thank team 4915 Spartronics and team 3223 The ROCK, our outstanding alliance partners! We would also like to thank all of the teams at the event, the judges, the volunteers, the parents, and everyone else for making the weekend such a resounding success.

Barring minor problems here and there, Apex's robot, HAILSTORM, had few issues during the event. The worst problem required a swap of the entire climber sub-assembly, but fortunately was not a real pain for us as we had a spare. We also added our gear-securer mechanism to the rear of our robot, preventing gears from falling out of our gearer when hit. The mechanism that feeds our shooter has been modified so it does not jam, and our shooter is now functional. We ended up disabling our fuel collector in favor of a more consistent climb for this event only.

In the two weeks until Mount Vernon we plan to tune our shooter and improve our gear securing mechanism. We also plan to add an additional 775pro motor to power our ball collector.

We look forward to seeing you at Mount Vernon, Glacier Peak, or PNW District Championship. Thank you all again for an amazing season so far!

Bag Day!

2017's bag day was a huge success for Apex Robotics. Our second competition robot has been bagged and tagged, and this year our practice robot is both sturdier and more accurate to the competition bot. It's time to celebrate!

Apex is throwing a reveal party open to all on February 27th from 7:00 to 8:30 in the Seattle Christian School auditorium. Admission is free and refreshments will be provided. It should be a lot of fun!

The Apex Robotics 2017 reveal video will be released very soon. Media is working as hard as possible on polishing it down to every last detail.

Just a side note, the website has been updated with a new "files" tab. There's nothing on that tab yet, but check back soon for file releases. The robot portal has been mostly updated, although the Hailstorm and MagiKarp pages are still under construction and currently throw a 403 error. This will most likely be fixed within the week.

Finally, Apex Robotics would like to express their gratitude to all the 2017 (and 2016) sponsors for their generosity. Our team wouldn't be here without you. The sponsors page will be updated very soon with a new layout and logos as a sign of our gratitude. Thank you!

Build Season Update

Hello FRC teams and fans! As there hasn't been an update in a while, I wanted to assure everyone that Apex is still striving to reach the peak of excellence!

Build season began in January and now we have a few more weeks to compete everything and ready up for STEAMWORKS! Right now, Apex is working on finishing the practice robot and starting to build the competition bot. Next week, it's coding time! Our wonderful programmers have been working with additional technology, utilizing PartyStalker v.01, our recommissioned off-season robot, as a guinea pig. Meanwhile our electrical team is still doing double duty and pitching in to help fabricate both bots.

Documentation and Media have lost some members, but are still striving to put out content on the less visible fronts of Apex. Apex's animation for the Digital Animation Award has been submitted a few months after its announcement, and work on the reveal video has now commenced.

We want to thank our amazing sponsors for their contribution. Without the help of C4 Labs, AeroTEC, and Concept Systems, our robot would not look or perform as well as it (hopefully!) will. We also want to thank fellow PNW team 2046 for helping us out with cutting our drive rails! Thanks to all the people that have helped keep this season going!

We look forward to seeing friends and competing at Auburn Mountainview. Until then, we wish our fellow robotics teams a smooth build season and a great run in STEAMWORKS!

Offseason Update

Apex Robotics had a wonderful offseason and looks forward to competing in FIRST STEAMworks in 2017! Here are some updates from our summer and fall.

Apex Robotics had a great opportunity to travel to San Jose for Chezy Champs hosted by 254. Thank you to all the wonderful teams at the event for making the competition amazing! We all had a great time, and despite getting knocked out in quarterfinals we still met a lot of new people and made new friends.

Our third robot project is still happening! Despite delays the drivebase and shooter are complete and the electronics/pneumatics are being mounted now. Only a couple more weeks until reveal!

We had a wonderful opportunity to demo at the Barnes & Noble Mini Maker Faire. Through the event we were able to share the mission of FIRST and demonstrate our robot. Thank you to all the people who made this a success!

Again, thank you all for a great offseason and we cannot wait until next year!

Peak Performance a Success

The inaugural Peak Performance Offseason Event was a huge success! Congratulations to the winning alliance, 4911, 360, and 3238, and thank you students, mentors, and especially volunteers for making sure the event went off without a hitch! We hope to see you next year at the 2017 Peak Performance Offseason Event!

Sign up for notifications at: peakperformance@apexfrc.com