On November 5, the N.E.R.D.S. team met at the dwelling of Mr. Gerald Nelson to have a robotics meeting. Those attending were Evan Nothstine, Caden Peck, Kevin Henggler, Nathan Meyer, Coulton Swalle, Mr. Nelson, Mr. Ross, and Micheal Burke.
The meet began with the preparing of the arena for the new robot. The powerful wheels had, through the numerous crashes as members got used to the robot, unhinged the arena walls. Mr. Burke and Mr. Peck hammered together the pipes that made up the wall, and in a matter of minutes, all was in good shape. The meet continued with the driving of the new robot, and tuning and fixing it after the several crashes it sustained. The meet heavily consisted of preparing the parts for this robots soon-to-be adventures in autonomous and exercises with the point and cap balls. Members circulated through tasks, taking turns driving the robot, tuning it, acting as coaches for drivers, and creating parts for the point ball launcher for the robot. One of the most important jobs was the preparing, and sanding of the special wood to be used in the cap ball carrying scissorlift. The wood is called “greenheart.” Greenheart wood comes from an evergreen tree from South America. It is used in many different types of construction projects due to its extreme durability and hardness. It is strong enough that in some cases, it requires unique or especially strong carving tools to work with. For these reasons, the team chose greenheart as their wood for the scissorlift. The greenheart wood beams used in the scissorlift, after being prepared, were set to the side to await drilling. Unfortunately, time ran out on Team 9960, and the meet came to an end before the wood could be put together as a scissorlift.
One thing is for sure, the greenheart used will not be wasted, as the N.E.R.D.S. team looked forward to using it in their future mechanical marvel.