Meeting Minutes - Mar. 16, 2003
by Peter Campbell

Attending

• Peter Campbell - President, (Treasurer, Secretary)
• Tom Spaulding - Vice President
• Mike Dvorsky - Librarian
• Bob Negri - Webmaster
• Alan Kilty
• Roy Birnbrook - New Member (Welcome aboard, Roy!)

Old and New Business

1. Tom pointed out that May 10, the date we had in mind for our first competition of 2003, is only a couple of months away. We are not prepared, and we haven't done any publicity, so potential competitors are also short on time to prepare. There was a consensus among those present that it would be better to cancel the May competition than to proceed with what would likely turn out to be a disappointing and embarrassing event. Thus, the May competition is hereby officially canceled. With our current lack of manpower, it will be hard enough to put on one competition this year.
   
   
2. Alan suggested selling CIRC t-shirts at our competitions. We've done it before, and I think we should do it again. We can afford to have some made. Perhaps we should start by resurrecting our t-shirt design contest, but I would suggest having t-shirts made with just the CIRC logo in black, blue and red on white fabric.
   
   
3. Roy suggested that the Lakeview Museum newsletter should mention our competitions. I agree, and I think that our monthly meetings should be on their calendar, too. I will contact them about it.
   
   
4. Tom is pursuing getting us into the Robot Fighting League. He will create RFL-compatible rules for our next competition. He mentioned that as an RFL member, we will have to take safety very seriously.
   
   
5. Bob Negri, our new webmaster, asked everyone to submit their favorite robotics-related links for a new Links page on our web site. It would be nice if you would include a one-line description of the site along with the link. Bob will start a thread on our mailing list for link suggestions.
   
   
6. Tom gave a talk and showed a video he made demonstrating basic operations on his lathe. I hope others will share info about their favorite bot-building tools and techniques at future meetings.
   
   
7. Alan mentioned the differences between the 7075 and 6061 grades of aluminum. I did a little research and found that 7075 is more expensive and less commonly available than 6061, but 7075 is something like 80% stronger and only 3% heavier than 6061. 7075 also machines better than 6061.
   
   
8. Tom brought Buzzkill, his 3 lb. RC combat robot for static display. (Too dangerous to power it up in the conference room!) He showed video of his matches at Robot Club & Grille in Pittsburgh, where he beat three other bots to win first place.

Buzzkill is a nice piece of work, built from UHMW, lexan, carbon fiber, titanium, etc. It uses two Escap motors available at robotcombat.com for propulsion, with belts providing 4WD. Its weapon is a very effective pneumatic flipper.

9. Mike brought and demonstrated his fire-fighting robot. It's looking good, but Mike still has some work ahead of him to prepare it for the contest at Trinity College next month.
   
   
10. I brought a demo of some of the stuff I'll be using on my fire-fighting robot, including a Hamamatsu UVtron to detect the flame and an Attwood Turbo 3000 blower to put it out.
    
    
11. Roy brought and demonstrated some BattleBots toys.
    
    
12. Bob took some pictures, so if you weren't there, you should soon be able to see what you missed by checking our web site.

Next meeting: April 27