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!